What are the characteristics of cursive script?

Sickness, escape, rhyme and strangeness. Sickness is like a snake in the grass, which shocks the sky; Escape like a flock of cranes playing in the sea and phoenix dancing for nine days; Rhyme is like snow, fog covers the bright moon; Strangely, clouds gather and water disperse, and landslides and waves rush. The cursive script was formed in the Han Dynasty and evolved from the official script for simplicity.

The cursive script includes "Cao Zhang, Today Grass and Crazy Grass". Cao Zhang is characterized by distinguishing words, not continuity, and French style with proper limit. For example, the last stroke of a painting is horizontal, the left and right strokes are distinct, and the strokes rotate. Now it is grass, and its appearance is simple and thick.

This kind of grass is characterized by removing the official script strokes preserved in Cao Zhang, connecting the upper and lower characters and strokes, and borrowing radicals from each other, commonly known as cursive script. "Weeds" is characterized by bold and unrestrained brushstrokes, continuous brushstrokes, no trace of font changes, white structure and composition, not limited by any grid, sometimes sparse and dense, sometimes imaginary, magnificent and myriad gestures.

Cao Zhang is a sketch of official script, so it originated from official script. Legend has it that it was created by You family in Huangmenling at the end of the Western Han Dynasty and Yuan Dynasty. In fact, the early "Cao Zhang" is an urgent and crude variant of "official script", so its brushwork and structure have no certain norms to follow.

It was not until the Eastern Han Dynasty that the fonts of Zhang Zhi and Cao Zhang matured and reached their peak in the Wei and Jin Dynasties. Among them, famous calligraphers, such as those in the Wei and Jin Dynasties, the statues of emperors in the Wu Dynasty and those in the Jin Dynasty, are all called "masters".