By the Ming Dynasty, the button decoration art of Shoushan Stone had made great progress. On the basis of inheriting the ancient jade seal, bronze seal and other button decorations, sculptors have high attainments and unique artistic style of button printing, and Shoushan stone seal has become a favorite and treasured treasure of literati. Due to the appearance of stone buttons, Shoushan stone carving skills have changed and developed greatly, and the methods of cutting tools, holding tools and transporting tools have all changed. In the past, stone statues were mainly carved with long knives with wooden handles on their shoulders, and the direction of the knives was relatively straight. For small sealed buttons, this method is obviously not applicable. Knives have evolved into hand chisels and trimmers, which are completely mastered by hands and transported like pens. Knife is both rigid and soft, smooth and smooth.
Apart from painting, calligraphy and sculpture, micro-carving also needs special materials, special tools, special eyesight, special fingering, special ideas, special perseverance and unique ideas. In addition, we should also have our own characteristics in polishing, planing, coloring and maintenance of materials.
special tool
Choose tools with different hardness according to different materials. The knife is too soft to eat, too hard, and it will crack when touched. Tool selection and polishing, polishing tools is the difficulty of micro-carving creation. Some people say that once the tools are polished, the micro-carving is half the battle. To carve fine characters, the strokes must be small, and the tip of the tool must be smaller than the strokes, which is of course invisible to the naked eye. This must be polished by hand and heart. Cutters have different lengths and sizes according to different purposes, and blades are also divided into circular, flat, inclined, pointed, triangular and polygonal. These are usually made by the creators themselves.
A pair of special eyes
The ancients emphasized: "Practice your eyes before writing", that is to say, writing depends not only on your handwriting, but also on your eyes, and most of them look at your eyes before writing. According to statistics, when writing, 65-70% depends on eyes, and the remaining 30-35% depends on hand movements. What are your eyes looking at? Look at the center of gravity, stroke length, stroke direction, structural stability, etc. These are all factors that determine the quality of writing. Moreover, it is impossible to engrave such small words without an eye. When practicing eyesight, get rid of distractions, stick to your abdomen, concentrate on one thing and practice often. Over time, objects will get bigger and clearer. Because you often practice your eyesight, your eyesight is better than the average person. I can see every word I carved clearly without a magnifying glass. Otherwise, how can I find out if it is a mistake or a missing one?
Unique finger works
The so-called finger work refers to the strength of arms, wrists and fingers and the keen and sensitive ability of fingers. After a long and hard exercise, Kung Fu arrived home. No matter how hard the material is, it will eat a knife. You can feel it when you touch any material. Everyone exercises in different ways, but all roads lead to the same goal, and they must meet the above requirements.
Specific experience
The strokes of micro-sculpture and painting are very small, and there will be powder crumbs when making them, so the strokes can't be seen clearly with the naked eye. Of course, this can only rely on hand feeling and experience. When carving, the strokes should not be too long or too short, but must be just right and done in one go. If the word "Wang" is engraved, it is three horizontal and one vertical, and the length just becomes a word "Wang". If a little vertical extension becomes the word "main", a little downward extension becomes the word "hand", and both up and down extensions become the word "abundant", this vertical extension should be carved properly, and there should be no difference between the first horizontal extension and the third horizontal extension. You have to practice your brain by yourself. It is not bad to practice to concentrate your strength and feelings on the blade, to achieve the unity of mind, strength and spirit, to stretch freely, to correspond with your heart and hand, to write and draw without looking, and to read the operating knife at will. Practice makes perfect, so it is not so much an idea as an idea from experience.
Selected materials
Materials are the foundation of micro-carving. Although there are many materials that can be used to make micro-carving, we still have to choose. Materials with moderate hardness, smooth surface, fine texture, purity, and no astringency or greasy are generally divided into five categories. Metal texture: including gold, silver, lead, tin, copper, iron, etc. Ore texture: including Baoyu, precious stones, agate, jadeite, crystal, pyrophyllite, talc, etc. Ceramic texture: including ceramics, mud, etc. Animal texture: including ivory, animal bones, rhinoceros horns, horns, antlers, shells, amber, etc. Plant species: including boxwood, rosewood, redwood, bamboo root, etc. These materials have their own characteristics, and they are all good materials for micro-carving works of art. According to hardness, they can also be divided into soft micro-carving materials and hard micro-carving materials. Generally speaking, the micro-carved artworks created with precious materials are more precious and collectible.
Special perseverance
You must have perseverance in everything, and you must also have special perseverance in micro-sculpture creation. The best way to practice perseverance is to practice qigong. Qigong really gave me great perseverance and magical power. I've been carving on my desk day and night, and I've been practicing the knife for a long time, but my hands are not sour, numb and cocoon-free, and the carved words are delicate and standardized. For example, Tong Hai spent 1 year and 3 months creating Shoushan Stone's miniature sculpture Selected Works of Mao Zedong, and he worked more than 18 hours every day. Sometimes he stays up all night and devotes himself to writing. He knew nothing about what happened outdoors, and even didn't hear any sound, almost to the point of forgetting myself.
Unique concept
The same material, in the hands of different authors, may create completely different works of art due to differences in aesthetic concepts, artistic accomplishment and technical expertise, as well as differences in creative intentions and expression techniques, so conceptual design has become the key to micro-sculpture creation. To conceive a design, we should not only be good at using the characteristics of materials, but also be good at using various skills. Only by giving full play to the author's talents and specialties and embodying various artistic styles and expressions can we better show the magical charm of micro-carving art.
To create a fine micro-sculpture, efforts must be made in polishing, planing, coloring, curing and decoration of materials. Let's just say that coloring is also a difficult point. There are three main difficulties: first, it can't be colored; second, it is uneven after coloring; third, it is not clean around the strokes after coloring, and there are other problems.