Chinese calligraphy Study

During the summer vacation, by a stroke of luck, I met Mr. Pan, a friend well-versed in Chinese traditional culture, ink painting, and calligraphy. Due to my long-standing interest in traditional Chinese art, I asked him to become my teacher. Through our conversations, I learned that Chinese calligraphy originally originated from oracle bone script. Since it was a form of divination using random characters derived from cracks, produced by burning tortoise shells, its formation can be said to be partly man-made and partly uncontrollable by humans, i.e., traces created by nature. This laid the foundation for one of the core principles of calligraphy: following nature.

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Later, calligraphy evolved from natural traces to the traces made by human arms and wrist movements. Good calligraphy has a smooth appearance and strong internal force, and also reflects the writer's spirit and energy. After about fifteen hundred years of evolution, commonly used characters evolved from oracle bone script to seal script, then simplified into clerical script, a script that closely resembles modern characters. On the basis of clerical script, regular script, running script, and cursive script were developed. In summary, clerical script is actually the foundation of learning calligraphy.