For official script, people generally praise Han Li and Qing Li. In fact, the "Good King Stele" written in the Eastern Jin Dynasty has an important artistic status in official script. The stele was erected on the east side of the tomb of King Haoda in Ji'an County, Jilin Province. It was discovered by a calligrapher in the 6th year of Guangxu's reign in the Qing Dynasty (1881 AD). The inscription has no date, but according to textual research, it was carved in the 10th year of Yixi in the Eastern Jin Dynasty (AD 414). It has 44 lines and 1,775 words. The content of the inscription narrates the achievements of Tandeok, the 19th king of the ancient Goguryeo Dynasty, who conquered the east and west and opened up new territories. Therefore, he is respected as "the good king who has widened the territory and made the territory safe".
It is generally believed that the calligraphy of "Haodawang Stele" is among the seal scripts and official scripts. It is square, unsophisticated, round and honest, and has the legacy of the seal scripts of Zhou and Qin Dynasties. The clear and elegant calligraphy style is quite different. I think that "Haodawang Stele" is written in official script and in seal script, with some features of regular script. The overall morphological characteristics of "Haodawang Stele" belong to the official script, but it appeared in the late Eastern Jin Dynasty, which was 200 years after the Eastern Han Dynasty when the official script matured. At that time, the Central Plains calligraphy represented by "Er Wang", Kai, Xing and Jin Cursive writing has matured and become popular. It may be that the ancient Goguryeo dynasty was located in the northeastern border, and its cultural development lagged behind that of the inland Central Plains. Therefore, when the fonts in the inland Central Plains had developed from official script to regular script and running script, they still used the simple official script, which was produced in the southwest borderland at about the same time. The situation is very similar in that "Er Cuan" also has official script legacy. However, "Er Cuan", especially "Cuan Longyan Stele", has been written in regular script, while "Haodawang Stele" still uses seal script. However, after all, the regular script of the Central Plains in the mainland has matured at this time, and its influence has reached. The structure of some characters in "The Monument of the Good King" also shows the characteristics of regular script. For example, next to the word "yan" in the stele, the first painting is Han Li. It is written as a short horizontal line, but it is written as a dot, which is exactly how it is written in regular script; for another example, simplified characters similar to those of later generations have appeared in the stele, such as "Xian, Bing, Yu, Mi", etc. This is one of the simplifications of Chinese characters. The application of "cursive script and regular script". "The Monument of the Great King" integrates seal script and official script into one furnace, and sometimes has the meaning of regular script, so it has a unique artistic value that "the ancients have never been seen before, and the newcomers have never been seen since". In the current calligraphy circle, innovation and calligraphy style are emphasized. Under the diverse circumstances, it is extremely enlightening for calligraphers who are keen on creating official script.
When I was writing, I felt that "The Monument of the Great King" has its own characteristics compared with the mature Han Li:
1. Judging from the structure, the structure of "The Monument of the Great King" has a unique clumsy flavor. This kind of clumsiness is different from the vigorous and cold ancient clumsiness of "Zhang Qian Stele" in Han Li, and also different from the broad and vigorous clumsiness of "Ode to the West" and "Ode to Yige". Mr. Zhu Isaac of Fuzhou and many other books Some people think it is a kind of "childishness", but I further analyze it as "stupidity" in "childishness", that is, it is not the "clumsiness" of smart and comely children, but the "clumsiness" of dull and stout children, a kind of naive and There is also a heavy flavor of "clumsy". First, the character shape is square and square, without the horizontal strokes common in Han Li. Sometimes it may be flat or longer depending on the radical combination of a certain character itself, which is different from the general Chinese Li character shape with left and right openings in a flat shape. The center of gravity of most characters is slightly lower than the center, which is similar to the structure of Wei stele and epitaph. Second, the shape of the glyph is tight on the outside and loose on the inside, like the word Yan. Each stroke is as long as it should be, and as short as it should be. The long strokes of some characters are also intentionally shortened. Most characters do not place special emphasis on the so-called "main stroke" of lengthening. This is different from "Ode to the Stone Gate" and so on, but similar to "Ode to the Stone Gate". "Ode to Hege" and "Ode to West Narrow". Third, the proportions of various parts of the combined character are generally balanced, but some parts have special treatment. For example, all the square-shaped "口", "日", "田", etc. are all written in extremely large sizes, and the specific characters are very prominent in one character; another example is "Zouzhi" (徶,廴), "三" Radicals such as "dianshui" (氵) and "立刀" (刂) are written more simply, and their proportion in a specific word appears to be relatively small. Because the special treatment of these parts is different from the usual construction rules, it shows the unique clumsy flavor of "Good King Stele".
2． From the perspective of brushwork, the brushwork of "Good King" is relatively simple. It is mainly used in the center and there is no side forward, just like Xiaozhuan.
Compared with the mature Han Li, the lines of "Hao Dawang Stele" are mainly round strokes, with fewer square strokes; the strokes are basically rounded and rounded, without decorative silkworm heads and tails, even like the horizontal and left strokes in "Ode to the Stone Gate" There are no symbolic wavy strokes like those in Chinese calligraphy and Ninghua. Each stroke is almost straight, with only slightly curved strokes and Ninghua. It is very similar to the "black body" characters in modern art calligraphy. This is the biggest difference with Han Li. In addition, the horizontal folding strokes of "Good King" are also different from those of Han Li. Basically, the horizontal strokes are directly folded with continuous strokes, sometimes in the shape of an outer square and an inner circle. Unlike Han Li, the horizontal strokes are drawn after the horizontal strokes are lifted, and then the strokes are folded directly. Start another stroke and write a vertical painting.
3. From the perspective of composition, the word spacing in "Haodawang Stele" is slightly larger than the line spacing, but the ratio between word spacing and line spacing is not as obvious as that of ordinary Han Li. Sometimes it is almost close, and the composition appears denser. In general Han official scripts, such as "Shi Chen Stele" and "Cao Quan Stele", the word spacing is obviously larger than the line spacing, and the composition appears sparse. Comparing the characters of "Good King's Monument", the sizes vary from character to character. Generally, the size is determined based on the number of strokes in a character. Characters with more strokes are written larger, and vice versa. There are also characters that are written on a certain part of the stele. The situation is very large. In short, there is disunity within unity. Although it is an inscription for the royal family, it does not deliberately pursue uniformity.
Because it is located in the border area, "The Monument of the Great King" was discovered relatively late. It is only a little over a hundred years since the rubbings were handed down, and its influence is not very great. Compared with the mature Han Dynasty, its strokes are not as good as the original ones. The decorative nature of the silkworm head and wild goose tail seems not so "authentic"; in addition, its special clumsy flavor is difficult to grasp, so there are fewer people writing about it. In my opinion, since the writing style of "Haodawang Stele" is relatively simple, it is not suitable for beginners to learn official script. Unlike the mature Han Li script, which has obvious waves and strokes, it is not very expressive. It is not conducive to mastering the basic writing skills of official script if it is used at the beginning of learning Li script. However, after you have gained some experience in studying official script, you can put some effort into "The Monument of the Great King" to draw nutrients from it, which will help to promote the formation of your personal artistic style. When writing "The Good King" and applying it to calligraphy creation, there are several points that need to be grasped:
First, we must pay attention to understanding and writing out the clumsy taste. When writing "The Good King", the main thing is to be able to write its childish flavor, and to carefully understand its unique structure, so as to master the rules and rules of its knotting, so that when writing the words that are not in the monument, Being able to write like "The Good King" means writing the spiritual aspect of "The Good King". Since "The Good King" is an inscription of the royal family after all, although it has a clumsy taste, its more than 1,700 characters actually have the unity of memory. Many of the same characters and the same radical structures are basically the same. Therefore, it is relatively easy to write words that are not in the stele like "Good King". This point is different from some of the epitaphs of the Northern Wei Dynasty that are almost at the same time, which are uninhibited and clumsy. It is more difficult to master the flavor of a certain epitaph by writing the words that are not in it. However, precisely because the structure of "The Good King" has such easy-to-understand regularity, when writing and creating, it is often prone to conceptualization and patterning problems, and the work is not vivid in writing. In addition, due to different aesthetic tastes, some calligraphers like to "elegance" some clumsy inscriptions. For example, Mr. Yan Gongda and Mr. Guan Jun from Nanjing wrote "The Good King" in a neat way. , elegant, it absorbs a certain spiritual atmosphere of "The Good King" and transforms it to create its own look. I think that when writing "The Good King", we should strive to write down its naivety and wildness, because this is the unique artistic value of "The Good King" that distinguishes it from other Han Li.
The second is to pay attention to the quality of the lines. The most fundamental reason why calligraphy becomes an art is the quality of lines. When I was writing "The Good King", I had to pay more attention to the quality of the lines. Because it has no decorative silkworm head and wild goose tail, each stroke is just a straight and simple line. If this line has no quality and no "gold and stone energy", this kind of "Good King" will be worthless. The quality of the lines mainly depends on long-term practice of brushwork and continuous understanding of the relationship between pen, ink and paper. At the same time, choosing the appropriate pen, ink and paper are also important external conditions for expressing the quality of the lines in "The Good King". My personal experience is that ① use a short-edge pen or a center-edge pen instead of a long-edge pen. The former is easier to write round and slow lines, while the latter is easier to write elegant and smooth lines. The main characteristics of the lines in "The Good King" are It is round, slow and astringent; ② Use rougher paper, such as rough edge paper and Yuanshu paper, without raw paper.
I like to use a kind of bamboo paper produced by farmers' small workshops in Fujian. Since the paper surface is not very smooth, there will be resistance when writing, and dry edges tend to appear above and below the lines or on the left and right sides, showing a sense of confusion. It feels like the lines of "The Good King". If the writing is written with raw materials, if the writing is slow, the ink will easily bleed. If the writing is fast, the effect of a dry pen will appear, but it will be difficult to show a rich feeling, which will ultimately be far from "The Good King". ③Use thicker ink. Lines written with thick ink tend to have a thicker feel, but thick ink does not mean greasy, turbid, or unchanged ink color. If the ink is too thick and greasy, it will be difficult for the ink to enter the paper when the writing speed is high, and the ink color will float on the paper, and it will not be able to be said to be "penetrating into the wood". Pay attention to blending with water to make it thick but not greasy. Coupled with the changes in the lightness, severity, and speed of the strokes, the ink color will have a correspondingly dark and dry effect, so the quality of the lines will naturally be high.
The third is to pay attention to the combination of practice and creation. As mentioned earlier, it is best to write and study "The Good King" after you have a certain foundation in studying official script. Because we have a certain foundation in official script, after we have some understanding and experience in writing "Good King", we can create simulations. In particular, we can write characters that are not in "Good King" to look like "Good King", and process The relationship between good words and words is the composition. These two points can only be solved in creation. At the beginning of the creation stage, it may not be easy to write the spiritual atmosphere of "The Good King". You need to carefully analyze the shortcomings, and then carefully write the post to deepen your understanding of "The Good King". In this way, it is possible to "write as if there is a spirit in writing" when you first post - create - then post again - then create again. I liked "The Good King" very much when I saw it many years ago, but when I started writing it after a period of time, the writing was always very rigid and lacked interest. After several years of writing epitaphs and statues of the Northern Dynasties, and in recent years I resumed writing "The Good King", which gave me a new feeling. Now when I create works in the style of "The Good King", I sometimes have to write dozens of words first to put myself in a "prescribed situation", so as to make the work vivid, interesting and artistically appealing.