A stiff brush, usually made of the hair on the tail of a weasel, is called a "wolf brush" or a "purple brush". It can also be made of hard hair such as rabbit hair, moustache, deer hair, bristle and leopard hair. The characteristics of bristles are vigorous, flexible and sharp. When writing, you can be coarse and fine, and you can make it turn with setbacks. Clean and neat, the ink color changes obviously, suitable for cursive writing. Small font and rigorous structure. Fang Bi's strong writing style should also be written in wolf's hair. But for beginners, in order to exercise their writing ability, it is not advisable to use bristles.
Soft brush, soft, poor elasticity. The material is mainly made of wool, chicken feathers, fetal hair and other soft hairs. Wool brush, also known as goat hair, is made of goat hair, and also made of antelope hair and green sheep hair. Its performance is softer than purple brush. Because goat hair is thinner and longer, it is easy to absorb ink, which is suitable for beginners to exercise their skills, as well as for writing big characters and breaking Chinese characters. The feather brush is made of the hair on the cock's chest, and its performance is softer than wool, which is not easy for beginners to master. If you can brush your hair freely, you will receive special effects.
Double-barrel brush, as the name implies, means both. That is, it is made of two kinds of animal hair, with hard hair as the core and soft hair around it, and its rigidity and elasticity are between hard hair and soft hair. It's a pen in the middle of sex. When writing, you should combine rigidity with softness, but softness is not rigidity. The most common double-stranded brush is a purple brush made of rabbit hair and wool, which is generally made of purple hair and wool in different proportions. It can be divided into "nine purple One Sheep", "Three Purple Seven Sheep", "Seven Purple Three Sheep" and "Five Purple Five Sheep". There are also foreign goat hair and double-stranded writing brushes made of weasels, which are divided into "little white cloud", "Zhong Baiyun" and "Da Baiyun" according to their sizes. Purple sheep hair is softer than purple wolf hair. Generally speaking, the greater the proportion of wool quilt, the softer the pen holder. There are also bristles added to the big wool barrel pen to enhance its elasticity.
The above three kinds of pens with different properties, namely, hard pen, soft pen and double-headed brush, have different uses. Before the Song Dynasty, most calligraphers used hard pen to write. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, calligraphers wrote more and more words, and some pens were changed from hard pen to sheep hair. Because wool is long, it is suitable for making big characters. Generally speaking, writing running script and cursive script with hard pen is refreshing and easy to write, easy to rise and fall: writing regular script, official script and seal script with soft pen is easy to moisten and enrich. Of course, this is not absolute. You can write regular script, seal script and official script with hard pen, or you can write cursive script with sheep hair. Mr. Lin Sanzhi, a contemporary grass sage, writes cursive script with a long and soft brush, which is not only vigorous and upright, but also smart and meaningful. Because the pen tip is long and contains a lot of ink, a few words can be written when dipped in ink, which is easy to show the continuous momentum between words and the change of ink color. Because Changfeng Yang Hao's pen is soft and long, Cai Yong in the Eastern Han Dynasty called it "strange soft pen", so it is easy to produce endless changes and unexpected artistic effects. However, the sheeppaw pen is soft, especially the long-side sheeppaw pen. When the pen is pressed, it will lie flat and spread out, which is difficult to grasp. At this time, it is entirely up to the writer to adjust the nib with the skill of lifting the pen, and the bristle brush is better. Because of its high elastic strength, when the pen is pressed and lifted again, the pen tip can be restored to the original condensed state, so it can be lifted freely and is quite handy. However, due to the hardness and flexibility of the brush, the strokes will appear too sharp and angular, which is the disadvantage of the bristle brush. In short, it is not easy to write vigorous and straight words with a sheep's brush and peaceful and flexible words with a hard pen. Therefore, write words with strong style and choose healthy words; Write charming and plump words and choose soft ones; Write hard pen and soft pen, and then choose double brush.
For beginners, if you use a hard brush from the beginning, it will be easier to pick up the pen without much skill, because the pen will help you a lot, but over time, you can only use a hard brush. Once you pick up the sheep's hair, you will feel unable to move. On the contrary, if you practice calligraphy with sheep's hair when you are a beginner, although it is difficult at first, you must change the front by lifting and pressing to write qualified strokes, but you also learn the method of using soft pen. With the increase of contact time, you will gradually become handy and use it freely. At this time, if you pick up a hard brush to write, you will feel relaxed.
I think the above answer also answers your other two Baidu questions, that is, "What brush is better for beginners to practice Yan regular script?" And "I want to ask the novice what kind of brush is better to practice?" I just want to explain what happened to the big white clouds. Thank you. "