Recommendations for Pen Kaishu Book (硬笔楷书)

[sparrow]

I like fairly neat handwriting, so I lean more toward Kaishu than Xingshu.

 

Does anyone know of any good Yingbi Kaishu books that I might find in the US or via Amazon?

 

 

...or perhaps a good yingbi kaishu font?

[imron]

For fonts, Hanzi Grids uses 方正硬笔楷书_GBK.  You can purchase a copy of the font for personal use from Taobao for RMB 4.

 

Hat-tip to @cleverclogs for pointing that out.

[skylee]

This is perhaps not relevant.  But when I read the first sentence of the first post, my immediate reaction was that "as if we had a choice".  I mean, in real life, when we write by hand, we usually write pretty fast.  Not sure about other people but usually I don't have the luxury of writing neatly and slowly.  I understand that writing fast probably does not equal to writing 行書.  But neat handwriting is not really what is happening in the real world.  Sorry if this is irrelevant.

[Hofmann]

I don't think there is anything like that (that's any good) on Amazon, although if you knew what to search for, you could get pirated copies of what you're looking for. However, the majority of it will be written by 田英章, whose penmanship I don't really care for. I'll show you an example.

 

 

This is from 《田英章硬筆楷書技法》. This is supposed to be in Ouyang Xun's style, but the horizontal strokes look even more curvy than in his brush writing (which looks kind of squishy). I find this waviness distracting in kaishu. (And it's in Simplified Chinese, but you probably don't care.)

 

I suggest looking at brush-written kaishu and trying to emulate it with a pencil. I know it's impossible, but it's your best option. A pencil because you can more easily emulate thick and thin strokes with the pencil's dark and light capability. The example I recommend is 九成宮醴泉銘. If you find that some characters are unclear, you can reference 姚孟起's copy of it.

[sparrow]

Thanks, Hofmann. I was looking at some of the handwriting you submitted and I find it really gorgeous. Perhaps, I will ask someone in a Chinese bookshop somewhere about this—I know I've seen these kinds of manuals in the Mainland, and I might have even bought one. I'll have to check my parents' house over the holidays...

 

I agree with you that I'm not a huge fan the 田英章 sample you posted. It's not...pen-like enough. That's why I hesitate to practice off of brush—and why I prefer using a pen. I want a somewhat non-varying pen stroke with fairly simple lines.

 

I may have to stick to google image searches at this point. I found this, which is not too shabby, but if I'm having trouble, I may just learn xingshu and simplify it's "xing"-ness to suit my taste. I'll see...

 

Perhaps, I'll delay improving my handwriting until my next trip to China. (Haven't been back for years, but...)

[sparrow]

@Skylee #2:

I didn't see your post at first. That's a good point—I am looking for a style that is fairly quick, but not too messy. You're probably correct and I should actually be looking for 行书 examples that are a little on the "楷”-side or something.

[Ruben von Zwack]

This type of "hand"writing you posted must be immensely popular in China at the moment (or who knows, maybe always has been, I can't compare!), I bought a few handwriting books for second graders (don't laugh! Suits me just right!) and they come in not exactly, but almost your font. "Mine" is still a bit straighter. Straigter is not the right term, but in yours, there are all these extra hooks and bends going on there in your sample，for example when you look at the water radicals, or the second stroke of 面 (2nd row from below, your sample).

Children's practice book:

[Hofmann]

Don't you think the characters are shifted to the lower right a bit?

 

Edit: upon further observation, yes it's straighter, but 田英章's is more correct, and easier on the eyes.

 

And also, if you can put up with the craptastic servers, you can look at http://www.yingbishufa.com/ZUOPIN/lt/index.htm and Ctrl+F for 欧阳询, 柳公权, or 颜真卿 and see which copies don't suck.

Edited December 16, 2013 at 11:03 PM by Hofmann

[mouse]

I know nothing about this sort of thing beyond the basics, but a quick search on baidu came up with this zhidao question. The top advice given seems pretty sound - start with the basic fundamentals, practice regularly, writing 5 characters properly a day is better than 50 you'll forget etc. However, when I checked out his recommendation of Pang Zhonghua, I found I really didn't like his handwriting at all. Baring in mind that I am a total handwriting novice, am I just being a philistine?

[Hofmann]

Bluntly, he sucks. Stay away.

 

Edit: I acknowledge, he was one of the major proponents of 硬筆書法, which to them means something like making non-brush writing look decent. However, his performance is really bad.

[sparrow]

I think for now, I'll hold off on handwriting. When I return to China or finally get to Taiwan, perhaps I'll invest the time. For now, I'll just concentrate on improving my actual linguistic abilities.

 

But to be honest, Hofmann, your handwriting is so beautiful. It really makes me want to improve this aspect of my Chinese.

[Hofmann]

Well thanks, but I'm not sure what you're talking about, because stuff I uploaded in 2009-ish really sucked. Could it have been this? This isn't mine.

 

[sparrow]

http://i40.tinypic.com/2qmmfeq.jpg

http://i48.tinypic.com/2ywh64m.jpg

 

[Hofmann]

Yes, old stuff. Ugly. Better look elsewhere. 趙孟頫, how about?

[sparrow]

Can you say "字帖"?