What do hard pen calligraphy and seal cutting mean?

1. Hard-pen calligraphy is a wonderful flower in the hundred gardens of calligraphy art, and its writing tools include pens, ballpoint pens, dip pens, pencils, plastic pens, bamboo pens, wooden pens and iron pens. , with ink as the main carrier, showing China's writing skills. It has the characteristics of convenient carrying, quick writing and wide use value. The difference between it and the brush pen is that it changes the rough stippling of the soft pen into a slender stippling, and removes its tendons and bones.

2. As for the origin of hard pen calligraphy, many people think that it can be traced back to ancient times, when people used stone tablets and knives to depict tortoise shells and animal bones, thus proving that hard pen calligraphy was an art form before brush calligraphy. However, knives and stone chips are far from the hard pen writing tools we use now, and there are still some differences between description and writing. This is why calligraphy and seal cutting are always two kinds of arts, although they are inextricably linked. Comparatively speaking, I prefer to trace the history of seal cutting back to Oracle Bone Inscriptions.

3. Seal cutting is the art of combining calligraphy (mainly seal script) with seal cutting (including chiseling and casting) to make seals, which is a unique art form of Chinese characters. Seal cutting rose in pre-Qin, flourished in Han, declined in Jin, lost in Tang and Song Dynasties, revived in Ming Dynasty and revived in Qing Dynasty. It has a history of more than 3700 years.