The linguistic vocabulary of a single line is monotonous. No matter how delicate the changes, it is still a single isolated world. Just like the carved beams and painted buildings of bricks and tiles in ancient buildings, and the gold tiles and glazed buildings, no matter how exquisite they are, they are also a part. But once it's part of a larger structure, it's exquisite, dazzling, ever-changing, and complements the rest of the world. Therefore, dialectics tells us that in order to study the line well, we must study its own form and quality, and second, we must study the "environment" in which it is located, that is, the way of composition and the mode of existence—the existence and action of the "line structure". Whether or not we can achieve these two things determines whether we can deeply explore and study various rich contents such as "line law", "line quality" and "line shape".
*In terms of the construction of the strips, calligraphy adopts an "orderly" construction. Relying on the inheritance of thousands of years of Chinese characters, it takes the orderly construction of Chinese characters as a strong cornerstone for the construction of its own calligraphy art, which is its key first step. The reason why it is said to be a strong cornerstone is that Chinese characters, as the only carrier of traditional culture, have extremely broad and profound ablation, throughput, condensation, and chemical synthesis capabilities, and have presented a variety of external structural forms in the evolution and transmutation of past dynasties. And this form is becoming the most reliable basis for the art of calligraphy in the history of 5,000 years of art development.
The material basis of Chinese characters is in form, and in terms of the general aspect, there are five types of scripts, namely seal, li, kai, xing, and grass. The "seal script" of the ancient writing system includes the Jinwen Great Seal and the Qin Small Seal, and the subdivisions include the oracle bone inscription, the Jinwen Great Seal to the Six Kingdoms Script, the Qin Seal and the Qin Li. Today's writing system, there are chapter grass, regular script, and ** line script, which started from the official script. Each title of the book has a complete set of "line structure" rules. Different book styles have different rules of "line construction". In a nutshell, they are called "line structures" because they are all ways of organizing and constructing lines. However, there are at least five levels of progressive in-depth refinement.
1) Based on the structure of the font book category. Seal script has a relatively static "line structure" method of seal script, while cursive script has a relatively dynamic "line structure" method of cursive script. Kai, Li, and Xing also have their own different emphasis on the "line structure" method.
2) Further deeper, even in the local field of regular script, there are already completely different "line structure" methods of Tang Kai and Wei Bei, such as the difference between "oblique painting tight knot" and "flat painting wide knot" mentioned by Mr. Sha Menghai, that is, the difference of "line structure". As shown below, the comparison between "Yuan Zhen's Epitaph" and "Yuan Yi's Epitaph".
3) Even if it is limited to Tang Kai, there are different styles of "line construction" from Ouyang Xun, Yu Shinan, Chu Suiliang, Xue Ji in the early Tang Dynasty to Yan Zhenqing and Liu Gongquan in the Middle Tang Dynasty. Ou Kai's square is like "Jiucheng Palace Liquan Ming", such as "Huangfu's Birthday Monument"; Chu Suiliang's strength is as swift as "Yin Fu Sutra", and the quality is as good as "Yique Buddha Shrine Tablet"; Yan Kai's broadness is like "Magu Xiantan Ji", dignified like "Duobao Pagoda Tablet" ......These square, steep, vigorous, solid, broad, and dignified are the terminology of style discussion, but in fact, they all refer to "line structure".
4) Further in-depth: A Yan Zhenqing calligraphy, there are more than a dozen kinds of hand-me-down engraved ink books, and each calligraphy also has its own unique "line structure" imprint that is different from others. In addition to the above-mentioned "Duobao Pagoda Tablet" and "Magu Xiantan Ji", there are also "Guo Xuji's Epitaph", "Dongfang Shuo Painting Praise", "Li Xuanjing Tablet", "Yan's Family Temple Tablet", "Guojia Temple Tablet", "Yan Qinli Tablet", "Baguan Zhaihui Baode Ji", "Self-written Confession Post", etc., first of all, the glyph and shape of each piece of law are different, and secondly, there are different styles. Under the same style type of Yan Zhenqing, because of the difference between the text structure and the calligraphy "line structure", it will also present a variety of beauty. In the world, there is a general and vague "Yan Ti" to deal with it, from the text, what is written is Yan Zi, but from the calligraphy point of view, in fact, how can it be so simple?
The reason why it is called "line structure" instead of "structure", "knot" and "knot" according to the old terminology is because for the art of calligraphy, the line comes first. If you are writing calligraphy, then the "character" is the first, and the line (stroke) is the component and element of the character. But in the art of calligraphy, the line comes first—of course, the glyph knot is indispensable, but it has one premise: the glyph (knot, knot, structure) of the Chinese character must be viewed from the standpoint of the "line" (the use of the pen and the penmanship).
In other words, when the shape is determined, the thickness, dryness, and blunt lines of brushwork will inevitably bring momentum, that is, the "potential" of the past, the present, and the future. Relying on the connection of stroke order first horizontal and then vertical, first skimming and then pinching, the connection between strokes and strokes constitutes the radicals and other parts of Chinese characters, and through the combination of these parts, a complete Chinese character is formed, and there are different ways to write Chinese characters. From writing to calligraphy, why pay attention to stroke order? This is because although we see static Chinese characters as a result, in fact, its starting point is still dynamic lines and dot drawing.
Sun Guoting's "Book of Calligraphy" "one point becomes the rule of one word, and one word is the standard of the final chapter", a point, a painting or a vertical of calligraphy is enough to set rules and provide an origin for a Chinese character or calligraphy glyph, or even an entire calligraphy work. The words of the sages of the ancients are about this truth. This is the basis for proposing the concept of "line structure".