书法课

picture: Entirely unrelated to today and today's entry. Just an
amusing sign that I saw - I don't really have any idea about what goes
on in the building.

Today I had my first 书法 (shu1fa3) or Chinese calligraphy class. Simply
put, it was awesome and I'm excited about it.

Of course the teacher was a nice young woman who just talked to us in
Chinese about calligraphy for a while � the meaning of calligraphy and
the essential components of it. Along with showing some examples (some
of them were the pretty classic examples) of how Chinese characters
started as pictographs and then moved on to talk about different
essential aspects of calligraphy. It is an distinctly an art, unlike
the mere writing of Chinese characters.

There is abstraction to calligraphy; it is always made of only two
colors and is composed of lines and shapes that don't attempt to mimic
world images. However, unlike other arts, employs words and the
meanings of these words to also retain the characteristics of
literature. Another important aspect of calligraphy is that it allows
for personal creation; the characters are a framework in which to
create. Lastly, the self and the emotions of the artist will show
through their paintbrush. Well, this is my understanding of what she
said.

After this introduction, we picked up our calligraphy supplies;
inkstone, paintbrush, rice paper, protective mat and got to work.
Apparently, there are eight strokes that, once mastered, are all that
are required to write every character. Of course it turned out to be
one of those things that sounds fairly simple. I had even been
thinking before class that it would be somewhat boring because I know
how to write Chinese characters now that I study Chinese, and well,
that's all there is to it. Right? Wrong.

Those eight strokes turned out to be very, very hard. All of them are
incorporated nicely in the character 永 yong3, (which means
everlasting, eternity, forever, etc � a pretty weighty character to
contemplate itself).
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/21/25638630_dffc02146e_o.jpg shows the
strokes in the character. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera.
Documenting our pathetic attempts at such deceptively simple strokes
would have been well worth it. Everything from too much ink on the
brush, misbalance of line weight or shapes made our marks on the paper
look like confused children's. After struggling through the strokes,
the teacher went on to discuss how looking at someone's calligraphy
literally gives you a window into their being � particularly when they
write their name. Therefore, our first project will be writing our
names. She then began to ask a few people for their names and
demonstrated writing them. It looked so easy � but don't be fooled.

Hopefully I'll have some pictures of this later.