I recently ordered a bunch of books on the calligraphy of various famous Chinese calligraphers, a series put out by the Jianxi Art Publishing House. These are wonderful books, the result of painstaking scholarship. For each calligrapher -- Wang Xizhi, or Zhao Ji, say -- they give a number of examples of how they have written any one of hundreds of characters at different times of their life. The mind boggles at the time and effort this would have taken. They're beautifully produced.
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| Closer up, on my desk, my paraphanalia |
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| This is a book of Tang poems that you can practice your calligraphy on. With characters set out for tracing. Uncut pages Quite lovely |
Above, on the left, my practice characters on the Tang Poems book: this one "Thoughts on a peaceful Night" by Li Bai, one of the famous "drunken poets". On the right, my quick and dirty cursive of the same poem, with my signature on the left and the seal at the bottom carved by me -- my name (傅) in Lesser Seal script.
