How to write leaves: vertical, horizontal fold, horizontal, horizontal, vertical.
Types of ancient Chinese calligraphy:
As we all know, there are 5 types of calligraphy today: Zhuan (zhuàn), Li, Kai, Xing and Cao. Although 5 types are not too many, But few people can practice it well. However, you may not know that there are far more than 5 calligraphy styles in ancient times. There was a calligrapher named Wei Xu in the Tang Dynasty who wrote a book called "Fifty-Six Kinds of Calligraphy with Preface". He said that there are 56 calligraphy styles. , very detailed.
Chinese calligraphy has a long history, and it has changed a lot from ancient times to the present. What are the main types of calligraphy in our country's thousands of years of history? Why is such calligraphy produced? In the history of Chinese civilization for thousands of years, there are nine main types of calligraphy: oracle bone inscriptions, bronze inscriptions, zhòu script, small seal script (zhuàn), official script, Wei stele, regular script, cursive script, and running script.
1. Oracle bone script
Oracle bone script is an ancient Chinese writing. It is the earliest mature Chinese character we can see. It mainly refers to the Chinese royal family in the late Shang Dynasty who used it for divination and recording events. The characters engraved on tortoise shells or animal bones are the earliest known systematic Shang Dynasty characters in China and East Asia.
2. Bronze Inscriptions
By the late Shang Dynasty, there were cast inscriptions on bronze vessels, which we call "bronze inscriptions". The "jinwen" here refers to the name of a calligraphy style of Chinese characters, which refers to the inscriptions cast on the bronzes of the Yin, Shang and Zhou dynasties, also called bell and tripod inscriptions.
3. Zhuan (zhòu) script
It is also called "big seal (zhuàn)", so named because it was recorded in "Shi Zhou (zhòu)", and the fonts often overlap. During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, it was popular in the Qin State. The surviving Shiguwen is the representative work of this kind of zhòu calligraphy. The Stone Drum Inscriptions are named after they are carved on stone drums. They are the earliest stone-engraved inscriptions and are the ancestors of stone carvings.
4. Small Seal Script (zhuàn)
After Qin Shihuang unified the writing system, he changed the large Seal Script (zhuàn) to the Small Seal Script (zhuàn). Based on the large seal script (zhòu) originally used in the Qin Dynasty, it was simplified and a unified Chinese character writing form was created. Xiaozhuan (zhuàn) was popular from the Qin Dynasty to the end of the Western Han Dynasty (about 8 AD), and was gradually replaced by official script.