When practicing calligraphy, the ancients paid great attention to writing skills, and often standardized the movements with pens into rules, which were called "brushwork". In the process of writing official characters, Cui Ziyu in the post-Han period found that the structure of the word "Yong" included eight basic stippling with a pen.
stippling is like a bird turning sideways; Cross-painting is like drawing a horse with a reins; Vertical painting is like pulling a bow hard; Hook painting is like a person kicking and jumping, and its force is all on the toes; Swinging is like riding a horse with a whip; Long hair is like sweeping long hair with a comb; Short skimming is like a bird pecking; Holding a pen is like cutting meat with a knife.
Therefore, he vividly described the basic strokes of Chinese characters, such as point, horizontal, vertical, hook, lift, left and right, with eight actions, namely "Eight Methods of Foreword". "Eight methods of eternal words" is the embodiment of statutes in basic stippling.
in the process of writing, only by mastering the basic statutes and using the writing norms of stippling freely can we realize the freedom of knot, blend into the temperament of the writer and form our own style. Calligraphers in all previous dynasties paid great attention to the study of the Eight Methods of Yong Characters. According to legend, Wang Xizhi devoted himself to calligraphy, specializing in the Eight Methods of Yong Characters for fifteen years. He believed that writing the word "Yong" well could understand all characters.
I don't know if it is a coincidence. The first word in Preface to Lanting, known as "the best running script in the world", is "forever". Legend has it that the seventh monk Sun Zhiyong of Wang Xizhi originally preserved the Preface to the Lanting Pavilion, and after painstaking research, he thought that the word "Yong" covered the basic requirements of China's calligraphy in stippling, which was his purport and taught the essentials to Yu Shinan. Since then, the eight methods of "Yong Zi" have had a wider influence and have been studied by more and more calligraphers. Summary:
China's calligraphy advocates the foundation, and there are eight strokes in the word Yong, which the ancients called "eight strokes of the word Yong", but these eight strokes constitute all Chinese characters. The proportion of the word "Yong" is also very good, so we advocate practicing the word "Yong"!
Lu Zhao said, "The Eight Methods of the Permanent Word is a point painting." However, the eight methods do not exist in isolation, and we are considering how to arrange each stippling, which actually involves the law of the structure of words. Therefore, the author of the eight methods intends to explain the writing and combination of basic stippling through the analysis of the word Yong.