Brush Technique & the Living Line

None of this requires you to write in order to be useful. Knowing what a trained viewer is looking at changes what you see in a piece of work.

Holding the brush

The standard grip uses all five fingers. The thumb and index finger hold the shaft from opposite sides, the middle finger presses from the front, and the ring and little fingers press back from behind. The shaft is held upright rather than sloped as a pen is.

Two conditions are emphasised. The palm should be hollow, as if holding an egg, so that the fingers are not clamped against it. And the grip should be firm but not tight; the traditional test is that the brush should not be easily pulled from the hand, but there is an equally traditional warning against gripping so hard that the hand cannot move.

The point of the upright brush is that the tip can move in any direction equally. A sloped brush favours some directions and resists others, which is fine for a pen writing left to right but wrong for characters whose strokes go every way.

Where the movement comes from

Beginners write with their fingers. Trained calligraphers do not, and this is probably the single largest technical difference between them.

Three positions are taught. With the wrist resting on the table, only small characters are possible and the range is limited. With the wrist lifted but the forearm resting, medium characters become possible. With the whole arm suspended clear of the table, the movement comes from the shoulder and waist and characters of any size can be written, though control takes much longer to acquire.

The suspended position is the goal for serious practice. It is tiring at first, and the shaking that beginners experience is normal and passes. Writing from the arm rather than the fingers is what makes long, even, continuous strokes possible at all.

Centre tip and side tip

When the tip of the brush travels along the middle of the stroke, with the hairs trailing evenly behind, the result is a line of even weight with ink distributed symmetrically. This is the centre-tip method and it is the foundation of the tradition; a line written this way has a quality traditionally described as round and full even when it is thin.

When the brush is tilted so that the tip runs along one edge of the stroke, the line becomes asymmetrical, with a sharp side and a rougher side. This is the side-tip method. It is not a fault. It produces sharpness and speed and is essential in clerical and running scripts, and in the hands of some masters it is a signature. But a writer who uses it because they cannot control the centre tip is doing something different from a writer who chooses it.

Inside a single stroke

Every stroke has three parts and each is deliberate. There is the entry, the movement, and the exit.

At the entry, the classical method is to begin by moving briefly in the opposite direction to the stroke, so that the tip is turned back into the line before travelling. This conceals the point of entry and produces a blunt, contained beginning. The alternative leaves the tip exposed and produces a sharp, visible start. Both are used, and the choice is stylistic: concealed beginnings look formal and reserved, exposed ones look quick and open.

During the movement, pressure changes continuously. Pressing spreads the hairs and widens the line; lifting narrows it. This alternation of pressing and lifting is the basic rhythm of Chinese writing, and a line of unvarying width is considered dead.

At the exit, the brush is either gathered back into itself, closing the stroke, or lifted away while still moving, leaving a taper. Endings that trail off without decision are a recognised fault.

Turning and folding

Where a stroke changes direction, there are two ways to do it and the tradition distinguishes them sharply. A turn is a continuous rounding of the corner without lifting, producing a smooth curve, and it is characteristic of seal script and of a soft, flowing manner. A fold is a distinct change of angle, made by lifting slightly, changing the tip's direction and pressing again, producing a corner with a visible shoulder.

Different styles favour different solutions, and mixing them within one piece without reason looks unsettled. Where a corner is neither properly turned nor properly folded, the result is the common beginner's fault of a corner that simply collapses.

What makes a line alive

The tradition's central quality has no single English term. It concerns whether a line has internal structure and force, or is merely a shape that has been filled with ink.

Several classical metaphors describe it, and they are more useful than they first appear. A stroke should be like an awl drawing through sand: the mark has a raised edge and a centre, made by something with a point rather than by something dragged. Like a leak stain running down a wall: the path is uneven and slow, finding its way, not ruled. Like a hairpin bent rather than broken at the turn: the corner keeps its integrity instead of cracking. And the force should carry through to the back of the paper, which is a way of saying the pressure went into the surface rather than skating across it.

Read together, these describe a line made with resistance, at a controlled speed, with the tip engaged in the paper. What they rule out is a line drawn quickly and lightly to produce a shape, which is exactly what an untrained hand produces.

Speed, dryness and the flying white

Speed is visible in the result, which is why it matters. Written slowly on absorbent paper, ink spreads and the line thickens. Written fast, the line stays tight and the brush may run short of ink, leaving streaks of unmarked paper within the stroke. This effect is called flying white and is prized when it happens naturally as a load runs out.

It is also possible to fake it by using too little ink deliberately, and experienced viewers can generally tell, because genuine flying white appears at the right point in the rhythm of reloading and imitation does not.

Building a character

Structure is judged separately from stroke quality, and a piece can be strong in one and weak in the other. The main considerations are balance, the relation of parts, and the treatment of space.

A character has a centre of gravity, and if it sits wrong the character looks as if it is falling even when every stroke is well made. Components have conventional proportions, and a left-hand element is usually narrower and set slightly higher than it appears in isolation. One stroke in most characters is dominant and the others are subordinate; treating every stroke as equally important produces a crowded, undifferentiated result.

The most quoted principle concerns space: plan the white as you plan the black. The gaps between strokes are considered shapes, they should be varied rather than uniform, and they should relate to each other. This is the single instruction that most changes how a beginner's characters look.

The page as a whole

Beyond the individual character there is the arrangement of the whole, which includes column alignment, spacing between characters and between columns, margins, and the placement of the signature and seal.

The important concept is that a column should read as continuous. Characters vary in size, and the variation should feel like the consequence of momentum rather than inconsistency. The connection between one character and the next is often carried by nothing visible at all, only by the direction in which the previous stroke ended and the next began. Viewers look for this, and its absence makes a page look like a collection of separate characters, which is a serious criticism.

How practice is structured

The traditional sequence is well defined. A beginner traces over printed red characters, which teaches stroke order and proportion with no decisions to make. Next comes copying with the model under thin paper, following the shapes directly. Then copying with the model beside the paper, which requires actually seeing the structure. Then writing from memory. Finally, writing in the spirit of the model rather than its exact form, which is where a personal hand begins to be permitted.

Skipping stages is the usual mistake and it is easy to detect: the writing looks approximately right and is wrong in every detail. The stages are not arbitrary, and each removes a support that the previous one provided.

Key points

• The brush is held upright with a hollow palm, so the tip can move equally in every direction.
• Trained writing comes from the arm and shoulder rather than the fingers, and the suspended-arm position is the goal despite being tiring at first.
• Centre-tip strokes are symmetrical and are the foundation, while side-tip strokes give sharpness and are a legitimate choice rather than a fault.
• Every stroke has a deliberate entry, a continuously varying middle and a decided ending, and a line of unvarying width is considered dead.
• The classical metaphors for a living line all describe resistance, controlled speed and an engaged tip, and they rule out a shape drawn lightly and quickly.
• Space between strokes is planned as deliberately as the strokes, and practice proceeds through tracing, copying, memory and finally free interpretation.