What is the basic skill of calligraphy?

The basic skills of calligraphy are a topic that people often talk about. I also have my own opinions on the knowledge and understanding of basic skills. The most common formulation is that basic skills are solid only when regular script is well written. The reason probably comes from what the ancients said: "If you want to learn cursive script, you should learn regular script first". The meaning of this sentence of the ancients is: if you want to learn cursive script, you must first be familiar with the jurisprudence of regular script. In a practical sense, this sentence is quite right. Because many legal principles of cursive script (more accurately, running script) are derived from regular script, running script and regular script have a very close "blood relationship". But this sentence only refers to a progressive relationship between learning mode and learning cursive script, a one-to-two logical relationship, not a question of basic skills.

If we judge that regular script is the basic skill of cursive script, we can draw the conclusion that official script is the basic skill of regular script and seal script is the basic skill of official script. It can also be inferred that "Da Zhuan is the basic skill of Xiao Zhuan" and "Oracle Bone Inscriptions is the basic skill of bronze inscriptions". If pushed down, what is Oracle Bone Inscriptions's basic skill? This is obviously illogical.

In addition, the statement that "writing regular script is a good basic skill" is also biased. From this point of view, the people who wrote Mao and Pan certainly had no basic skills. At that time, people didn't know what Kai was at all. Obviously, this formulation is also extremely unscientific.

Often in practice, we find that people who write well in regular script may not write well in cursive script. People who write well in cursive script may not write well in regular script. We also find that some people write well in Ou Kai, but not all Yan Kai, Xiao Kai and Zhao Kai can write well. Those who specialize in seal cutting and official tune are not necessarily good at writing, writing and cursive; Those who are good at grass may not be able to seal, turn and write. To be sure, no matter what kind of font, each font has its own inherent laws and methods. After practicing one font, it doesn't mean that other fonts can be developed by themselves without practicing.

Here, although there are some corresponding internal laws between various fonts and various books, they can be used for reference, but their respective laws and rules cannot be substituted for each other. For example, after a long period of sketching, you can only write words with Zhang Qian flavor, but you can't write Ode to Shimen immediately, and write Li characters with different styles such as Cao Quan and Huashan. Only by learning and mastering the methods one by one can we reproduce the font style of a monument. Otherwise, it is almost impossible to write anything without this process of learning and research. It can also be said with certainty that one expert cannot replace another, and it is difficult for one expert to replace another.

Moreover, different fonts and different books have different requirements for basic skills, and they are focused. Seal script, official script and regular script are all static fonts, which require strict brushwork and writing skills, paying more attention to the accuracy and stability of brushwork, followed by the requirements of qi, composition and pen and ink. Line and grass emphasize the variability and flexibility of brushwork, the rhythm, fluency and harmony of qi and composition, and the hierarchical rhythm of ink color. At the same time, different fonts, styles and schools have different requirements for basic skills. Write a series of beibei films, requiring the other person's pen to have strong descriptive ability; Writing seals requires a strong grasp of the radian of the round pen; Writing Huai Su and Wang Duo requires a strong ability of continuous and rapid pen control; Writing two kings requires a strong control over the rhythm of qi; Writing Zheng Banqiao requires better scheduling ability interspersed with contention, and so on.

Therefore, from the microscopic point of view, we can think that seal script has the basic skills of seal script, regular script has the basic skills of regular script, official script has the basic skills of official script, and cursive script has the basic skills of cursive script.

So what is the basic skill of calligraphy?

We believe that the basic skill of calligraphy should be the comprehensive ability of calligraphers' various skills and abilities. Both the ability to control the brush, the ability to control the font, the ability to control the ink method, and the ability to control the style and composition. In short, the basic skill of calligraphy is "the comprehensive ability of calligraphers to master brushwork, ink painting and composition".

We can take sports as an example. Its basic skills should be one person's: endurance, explosive power, bouncing ability, flexibility, balance ability, reaction ability and so on. The sum of these physical abilities is the basic skills of athletes. The higher his comprehensive index, the better his basic skills. At the same time, the wider the sports he can engage in, the greater the possibility of making achievements.