Chinese Calligraphy

Chinese calligraphy typically uses ink brushes to write Chinese characters (called Hanzi in Chinese, Kanji in Japanese, and Hanja in Korean). Calligraphy (in Chinese, Shufa 書法, in Japanese Shodo 書道, or "the way of writing") is considered an important art in East Asia and the most refined form of East Asian painting.

Calligraphy has influenced most major art styles in East Asia, including sumi-e, a style of Japanese painting based entirely on calligraphy.

The main categories of Chinese-character calligraphy

The main categories of Chinese-character calligraphy

English name	Hanzi	Pinyin	Romaji
Seal Script	篆書	Zhuanshu	Tensho
Running Script (Semi-cursive Script)	行書	Xingshu	Gyōsho
Grass Script (Cursive Script)	草書	Caoshu	Sōsho
Clerical Script (Official Script)	隸書 (隷書)	Lishu	Reisho
Regular Script (Block script)	楷書	Kaishu	Kaisho

For regular script characters, the character basically fits into a square space, with each character of roughly the same size and proportion. Learners of Chinese characters are likely to encounter this form first, and in learning to write Chinese characters the form enables the student to appreciate the proportions of each part of the character as well as each character stroke. Though brushpen has been used for over two thousand years, today, most students begin with pencil or pens, and the calligraphy of modern handwriting is also a challenge to read for those with expressive running hand script.

Grass script is notorious for its economy of individual penstrokes. Quite often different characters written in the regular script form may resemble each other when written in grass script.

The clerical script is highly stylised, a development from seal script form. They are highly angular in appearance, and as a precursor to regular script, for modern readers of Chinese characters, they are highly legible, compared to grass script, or seal script.

Seal scripts are regularised scripts, which are noted for the uniformity of thickness and space of vertical, horizontal and curved lines. By its very name, they main use are found on seals or chops. Seal carving is one branch of Chinese calligraphy, and considered as a high art, since it expresses the carver's calligraphy and artistic expression in fitting a number of characters (the majority of which are of seal script form) into such a small area of space, and carved in reverse so that the imprint obtained gives the characters in their proper form. Moreover, due to the nature of the size of seals and lack of space, the development of Chinese characters have been affected by seal carving, since simplification of characters has often been practised.

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