The most important thing is to master the skills and practice carefully.
To learn calligraphy, you must first understand a few points. Many people are not clear about these issues before learning calligraphy, so they are full of confusion during the learning process.
1. It is difficult to get started with calligraphy, but choosing the right teacher is key
Learning calligraphy is the most difficult at the introductory stage. If you only have a temporary enthusiasm for calligraphy, you can ignore this. If If you want to gain something from calligraphy, you must know that in the early stages of learning calligraphy, you need the guidance of a teacher and your own understanding. If teachers do not have scientific and systematic teaching methods to guide them, they will easily feel bored, lose confidence, and give up on calligraphy.
I remember that when I was in elementary school in the early 1980s, the school offered soft-pen calligraphy writing classes, but there were no formal professional calligraphy teachers. All classes were taught by head teachers, and the level of the teachers themselves was not high. , and even some teachers don’t know how to write with a brush at all, and they don’t know where to start, so they give up without even getting started. I was lucky enough to meet my calligraphy teacher, and that’s how I became associated with calligraphy.
So~ If you really want to learn calligraphy, you must choose a teacher carefully before starting. There are many online courses now. I suggest that before starting to study, carefully study the teacher's introduction and the content of the class. The result of such careful selection may not necessarily be the best, but it is definitely better than starting blindly!
2. Practicing calligraphy requires persistence
The learning of calligraphy depends on persistence. If you don't practice for two or three days, your hands will get bad. Even if you only practice for 10 minutes a day, it is better than not practicing for many days and then practicing many times a day.
Also, in the process of practicing calligraphy, we often spend 90% of our patience on the first few words, and our patience gradually decreases as we go on. In fact, no matter whether the words come first or last, whether we write for ten minutes or half an hour, we should treat every word we write with the same patience as when we wrote the first word~
3. Very basic skills Important
This is a question that many people will be troubled by in the process of learning calligraphy: Does learning calligraphy have to start with regular script? The answer I give here is not necessarily. If you are a student, you must start with regular script; if you are an adult, you can start with regular script, official script, or even seal script. But whether you are a student or an adult, learning calligraphy must start with the strokes and then understand the structure of the glyphs.
Learning calligraphy is the same as many small things we usually do. It requires constant persistence and step by step to finally get the result you want. If all the early things are omitted, even if you see progress in the short term, it will be an illusion. In fact, it won't take long for you to find that because of the early illusions, you have become too ambitious and slow to make progress, and you don't have the courage to start learning from scratch. Over time, you will lose confidence in calligraphy.
4. There is a difference between students’ calligraphy practice and adults’ calligraphy practice
We often see students’ calligraphy practice confused with adults’ calligraphy practice. In fact, adults have strong understanding ability, have been in contact with society for a long time, and have a certain understanding of aesthetics. They can start practicing calligraphy from regular script, official script, or even seal script and bronze script. To put it simply, you can start practicing with the font you like.
For students (if they are adults, you can skip these three paragraphs and go directly to point 5), some professional calligraphy tutoring classes let students practice bronze inscriptions and stone drums from the beginning. The beauty of the writing lies in its simplicity and innocence. It is like a book from heaven. It is beautiful without any modification. Often, the more innocent children who don’t know calligraphy write it, the more bluffing it is. In fact, it is like children’s drawings, which are only drawn by children. Bring out that kind of innocent beauty
Primary and middle school students have limited understanding and less exposure to aesthetic knowledge. This is very different from adults. They should start with block letters and become proficient in calligraphy using block letters. Usage and skills such as writing, writing, and edge hiding will also lay a certain foundation in the structure of characters, and fully understand the beauty of characters. In the improvement stage, you can practice some seal characters, official script, etc.
Of course, when students start learning calligraphy, parents will struggle with Yan Liu Ouzhao... There are so many fonts for their children to learn. In fact, children who are new to calligraphy deliberately choose fonts for them. It's wrong in itself. The most important thing in the entry-level stage is to understand the use of pens, the stroke structure of characters, and the overall arrangement of writing. Don't be too production-oriented and make corrections or stumble around. As long as it is regular script, as for what to choose, The main focus is on fonts. Each font has its own characteristics. After getting started, students can choose by themselves. Let's get started first.
5. Be diligent in learning and not "superstitious" about theories
In the process of practicing calligraphy, you will have many problems that you cannot solve. For example, I feel that my handwriting is awkward, but I just don’t know where the problem lies. When encountering this problem, calligraphers often like to read calligraphy theories. Not to mention that books and periodicals are now so commercialized, there are very few truly good books, and it is difficult to solve the problem in a targeted manner with a large number of theories. Reading a theoretical book is still not enough. Why not ask the teacher to demonstrate and explain it again.
For another example, the structure of words is the most difficult to master. At this time, many people will blindly read theoretical books on text structure, but the structure of each font is different, which often makes them more confused.
What I want to tell you is that as long as you read and understand the theory, there is no need to turn it into a dead end. After all, calligraphy is made through practice, not because you can’t read it. Study frequently, practice more, write more and ask more questions, and you will go further and further on the road of calligraphy! Just asking without practicing is useless
As for the choice of writing tools, I won’t go into details here, but I have one suggestion. When choosing a brush, choose “even”, “pointed” and “round”. "Healthy".