Chinese calligraphy : an introduction to its aesthetic and technique : with 6 plates and 155 text illustratons

TECHNIQUE

strength of the whole body can pass through the shoulder, arm, elbow, wrist, and fingers, into the brush-point: and the strokes of the brush

will be correspondingly vivid. The training necessary to attain mastery of this method must inevitably be long and persistent. Incomplete control results in shaky and quivering strokes. For K‘a-Shu the ones wrist and elbow (T'i-Wan)

need not be suspended very high, but for Hsing-Shu and Ts‘ao-Shu it is as well to raise them as high as is comfortable. The largest scrolls of all we write standing, a position which

FIG. 9 (Hsiian- a leaves the whole

arm and body with-

out support. This engenders in the stroke a dynamic force

as if an electric current had passed through the writer’s frame [ 143 ]