Well, dear friends, today we shall speak about the samples of writing and how they were and are used in the character writing training in China. We have spoken several times about the great masters of calligraphy who were copying these or those works by ancient calligraphers and who were copying these or those pieces of calligraphy so on. So the main question is how these things are done? How this copying thing is actually fulfilled? There are several ways of answering this question. Some of them are rather simple. You make some sort of a surface rather solid and not penetrating water and put some characters on it, and then cover it with the paper of calligraphy. It is very thin and you can read through it, and you can copy the outline of the character with your brush and thus train this or that manner of writing. Is it a good way? Somehow this way of learning calligraphy exists and somehow the writing samples that are to be covered with paper and copied in this way they are sold in the shops you can buy and you can train. But then you master only one way. You master the appearance, the outline of the character. But this character will never be found, it will never be recognized as a properly written. Even if it is very decorative, for instance, even if it is good-looking, the case is that the proper training in copying is a bit different. So these writing samples, these samples of calligraphy, sometimes they have different material for training in one book. Like here, for instance, here you have the original appearance of the characters of Ouyang Xun, here you have them put in this square of nine palaces and here you have the [inaudible] very thick paper with characters by Ouyang Xun and you can cover him with the calligraphic paper and write on the top of them, copying the lines and so on. But which way is correct? Where shall we start and how big, what's tile must those characters belong to? All these questions are very important, are burning. Where do you start the calligraphic classes? First of all, when you start training calligraphy, you'd better choose the so-called medium-sized characters, which means, classically, it's three and a half centimeters high, three and a half centimeters wide. But normally it can be a bit bigger, maybe five centimeters or so. So five centimeters character is the basis that you can start with. Which style? When you just begin, you'd better train kaishu characters and only that issues a shorthand style or maybe drawing style or something different from these two. It doesn't matter, but you have to start studying with the kaishu style. So normally the calligraphers' advice to start with the words by Ouyang Xun or Yan Zhenqing. This was already told during this course, but why? Is it that easy to copy characters by Yan Zhenqing for instance? No, it's not easy at all. A proper copying of Yan Zhenqing may take you many, many years, and even then, your characters would be far worse than those written by Yan Zhenqing himself. Why then his characters or why characters by Ouyang Xun? Here, this writing sample here we have the characters by Ouyang Xun, the one that as we spoke, didn't differ much. The widths of the horizontal and vertical and falling strokes they're more or less the same and the main emphasis is put on the structure on the harmony of proportions of the character itself. So if we start copying his works, what shall we do? First of all, we put the book with the samples of his writing near our working place and near the calligraphic paper that we're going to use. Sometimes they even use some stamps to put the book standing. But this is not that important, you can lay it down and then we have to look thoroughly at the structure of the character. But not only at the structure of their rhythms that this character has, that this character possesses. Actually, you must feel your way, the calligrapher himself felt while writing this character. How can it be done? First of all, you have to copy the rhythm of writing the character, of course, you wouldn't be able to phone Mr. Ouyang Xun and ask him what actual rhythm was he feeling while writing this and that character? But those things can be actually deciphered. They can be felt because when you look thoroughly at those characters, you will see that some strokes are written very fastly and with a lot of energy. Some of them are written rather slowly and with a lot of force. So this combination of very quick and very slow movements, of the very strong and very thoroughly worked out movements, they have to be felt and copied. So you look at this sample and you start writing trying to copy that rhythm. Not the strokes themselves. The strokes themselves are to be copied as well. But the rhythm, the rhythm goes the long way. Of course, when you start copying the characters in this way, it may take you quite a long time. You may not succeed, not in a month, neither in a year or even several years may go before you really achieve something, before your characters really start to look like the characters you copy. But if you succeed, it will mean that you are not merely copying the outline of the character, not the strokes you are copying. You are copying the force, the real inner work that's laid behind the appearance of the character. This was actually the calligraphy is for and only then you can say that you know a little bit of how to copy the characters by Ouyang Xun. That's why the characters by Ouyang Xun and Yan Zhenqing are chosen to copy the rhythm, and only when you've mastered it, you can go and find some other samples to copy or maybe other styles to copy. You have to copy the rhythms along with the outline of the strokes. This is what calligraphy is, so it takes time. Usually, when we speak about the masters of calligraphy, you will never find a master of calligraphy like 15 or 20 years old. Mostly when we speak of great calligraphers and their works we're speaking of aged people, sometimes rather old people and here even today, when you go to some parks in China, you're going to find aged people. We've brushes in their hands who are writing characters with water on the pavement of the park lanes and they are copying the characters there, holding the brush in one hand and the samples on the other hand, and they are copying them. So the way to copy, the way to use the calligraphic samples that existed and still existing in China and have been existing for centuries.
