Recent I wrote a Chinese post on the secrets of Chinese calligraphy (“Shufa” in Chinese Pinyin), as for “secrets”, it may sound incredible, but it’s true according to historical records.
For example, it was recorded that “calligraphy saint” Wang Xizhi as a child once stole a recipe of Shufa under his father’s pillow, and when he became old, he warned his son that the recipe couldn’t be easily shared with anyone outside the family.
Anyhow, it has become a consensus in today’s China that such secret techniques of writing did exist, but unfortunately, they were lost, and only few calligraphists after Song Dynasty penetrated the mysteries by studying their predecessors’ works.
Nowadays, some Chinese calligraphists are trying to dig out the secrets of Shufa, as it seems that none of today’s calligraphists write as good as ancient people – either shapes or lines of their writing is not to be compared with the ancients, no matter how hard they practice.
And after effortless learning and researching, I found a book named “Shu Fa You Fa” (which means “Chinese calligraphy has a law”) reliable and solves my fundamental bottleneck in practicing Chinese brush writing.
This book was written by Sun Xiaoyun, one of the best living calligraphers in China. After years of research, she found that the decline of Chinese handwriting originates from the change of sitting/kneeling postures of Chinese people and emergence of high tables, and the former postures would naturally make people write in a relaxed way with the brush rolling in their hands. And the writing techniques based on such rolling are the secrets of Chinese Calligraphy!
It’s complicated to elaborate it, but if you’re really interested in Chinese calligraphy and want to know its truth, I would highly recommend this book to you.
And before you read this book, you could take a glance at my Chinese post on this book, which contains more details than this English one. Here is the link: https://www.sunyansong.com/archives/6184, and welcome to leave your comments!
Update: We’re now providing Chinese calligraphy Logo design service, if you are interested in it, please contact me, click the front link to know more!
