Calligraphy has similarities with other art forms such as ** and fine arts, and it can be said that art is interconnected. If we compare each stroke in a Chinese character to a musical note, then the whole Chinese character is like a piece of music. In order to avoid blandness, there must be foreshadowing and climax, and the same is true for the arrangement of strokes in the structure of Chinese characters. In this article, we will take Chinese characters such as 聿 and Mo as examples to learn how to grasp the primary and secondary relationships between strokes in Chinese characters.
1. The primary and secondary relationship of juxtaposed strokes - "Yu".
The original meaning of "聿" is to write or paint with a pen in hand, it is also an ancient Chinese character, in ancient times, there were many Chinese characters with "聿" as the side, such as "書 (book)", "畫 (painting)", "盡 (end)" and "pen (pen)" and so on. The figure below shows the evolution of the word "book". The oracle bone inscription has the character "聿" on the top and "kou" on the bottom, which means to write down what you want to say in your mouth. The writing of Jin Wen and Xiao Seal is complicated, and the following "口" is replaced by "者", which originally indicates pronunciation. Later, the character "書" in regular script was simplified, and the following "者" was changed to the character "曰", and the modern simplified character "book" was changed according to the cursive writing of the character "書". Nowadays, the Chinese characters with "聿" as the side have been simplified, so understanding how they are written in traditional Chinese is very helpful in studying the character theory of these characters and learning how to write them.
There are many horizontal drawings of characters with "聿" as the side, and the ancients made the spacing of the horizontal drawings surprisingly consistent when writing, but the length of each horizontal drawing is different. As shown in the figure below, the word "book", if we turn the word "book (book)" horizontally in Ou Kai, we will find that its horizontal paintings of different lengths are like the waveform of **, which has ups and downs and priorities, and the length and horizontal are the main brushes, and other horizontal paintings are secondary. The ancients arranged this way to make the strokes of Chinese characters undulating and full of changes, so as not to appear dull, rigid and boring. When writing this kind of Chinese character with juxtaposed strokes, it is important to make a clear distinction between the main and the secondary, and the staggered ones.
Second, the primary and secondary relationship between different types of strokes - "Mo".
"Mo" is also an important part of Chinese characters, and the characters composed of it are all morphophonetic characters with "Mo" as the sound side, and the meaning of the word is represented by the shape of another part, such as "twilight, tomb, curtain, touch" and so on.
Don't look at the character "Mo" is composed of a variety of different strokes, but there is also a primary and secondary relationship between the strokes. As shown in the figure below, the main pen of the word "Mo" is the lowest long horizontal, and Ou Kai has to shorten the length of the apostrophe and the pen in order to highlight its importance, so that the pen becomes a point. Therefore, Chinese characters composed of different strokes are also like the sound waves in **, which have primary and secondary, long and short, and are full of changes.
When "Mo" becomes a part of the Chinese character and becomes a part of the combined character, the main character of the character will generally change. Comparing the two words "Mo" and "Twilight" (as shown in the figure above), we will find that the biggest change is the primary and secondary relationship between the strokes, the main pen of the word "Twilight" is no longer long and horizontal, it has become "apostrophe" and "捺", the left and right stretching of the apostrophe not only makes the glyph of the word "twilight" more stable, but also makes the "Mo" above and the "day" below integrated, which is very beautiful. In order to highlight the main stroke's skimming and pinching, Ou Kai had to turn the long and horizontal into short and horizontal, which was also to highlight the deliberate arrangement of the main pen.
Third, hard pen calligraphy comes from brush calligraphy, and it is also necessary to pay attention to the primary and secondary relationship of strokes. The prominence of the main pen in brush calligraphy can be lengthened and bolded, and the hard pen calligraphy is more through lengthening. The specific treatment mainly depends on the writer's aesthetic perception, of course, there are many well-structured calligraphers in history who can learn from it.
The primary and secondary relationship between Chinese character strokes is an important factor in determining whether the font is beautiful, and writing a good character is like playing the climax of a good **, which will make the whole character shine.