Fine Art Chinese Calligraphy

Wednesday 6th – Chinese Calligraphy

I was made aware of a 3rd year student in fine art was holding an exhibition of her work in the city centre. Alongside this was a calligraphy workshop, that happened to be in Chinese. This was highly interesting as it linked very well with my current work I was doing. I learnt about the culture within the style. This included the way the brush is held, the different ways to paint the stroke and how the script came about.

 

To start with we had a mini PowerPoint on the history of how the dialect came about. The Chinese culture had a lot of different dialects and through the centuries some came together and created a better and more diverse language with easier to read symbols. This was then adapted for the newer digital typeface styles that is now used for the majority of people’s handwriting.

When we began to paint the letters we had to learn to keep the paint brush upright and hold it with the tips of your fingers instead of the more European slanted and resting on your hand way. Through copying the woman in charge I managed to draw my own in the correct style. Starting with a slant and ending with a twist, which became more therapeutic as each stroke of the paint went down. I ended with several phrases, one being happy new year and another good luck.

Overall I learnt that different cultures still have the more than one style of writing such as the “a” can be written differently as well as the “g” or “z” depending on the typeface or style of handwriting used.