Improving Handwriting

[evn108]

I'm curious if anyone on this board has any tips, resources, or advice they can share on how to improve handwriting/penmanship. I'm not specifically concerned with wanting to memorize more characters or remember their strokes more quickly (though that would be nice, of course), what I'd like to do is work on making the characters that I write by hand casually look more "normal." I don't have any ambitions to perfect some particular calligraphic style, I just want to be able to write characters quickly in a way that looks like the way someone who had studied Chinese writing from childhood would write. My handwriting in English is already kind of messy, but I feel it has a "character" that doesn't really translate particularly well to Chinese, which just ends up looking sloppy. I learned to write characters the "brute force" way, by filling in hundreds of those little grids with the outlines that you trace. I suppose I could go back to this, but I'm afraid that would just leave me writing in a very awkward blocky style, like I was trying to imitate typographic font rather than have a regular and natural handwriting style. 

 

So, I'm not sure where to begin! Curious to hear how anyone else has dealt with a similar goal.

 

For reference (to see what we're up against, heh heh heh), I'll attach some random notes that show how sloppily I write when it's "just for me." I promise I can make it look somewhat better than this if I know I'm going to be showing it to someone. 

 

I did a quick search on the forum and found these two threads: https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/14918-handwriting-thread/

https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/22353-instructional-videos-on-handwriting/

Unfortunately some of the videos from the second post don't seem to be active anymore. 

 

[lips]

19 minutes ago, evn108 said:

in a way that looks like the way someone who had studied Chinese writing from childhood would write

Google 钢笔楷书 or 硬笔楷书 and you'll find lots of 字帖 for you to trace and (then) imitate (hundred of times!).  You can also go to http://www.popzitizh.com/v/yb.php to contvert text to 楷书 handwriting fonts.

 

BTW why is 测 in your handwriting in traditional format?

[evn108]

14 minutes ago, lips said:

BTW why is 测 in your handwriting in traditional format?

Because that's a page from a personal notebook that I wasn't really thinking too much about as I wrote... I was probably transcribing something from a book in simplified characters, and reverted to traditional out of habit because that's what I learned first. 

 

Thanks for the page though! I will check this out. Have you found that this kind of practice helps improve your normal writing style? I feel like if I "concentrate" I can imitate forms relatively well, but when I turn back to taking notes or writing things where I'm more concerned about the content, all that goes out the window

[889]

To save you the trouble of digging through back threads, here's what you want:

 

Chinese Cursive Script by Fang-yü Wang

 

I've never seen anything that comes close to this.

[lips]

3 minutes ago, 889 said:

Chinese Cursive Script by Fang-yü Wang

This is on cursive script （行书）as opposed to the standard 楷书.  行书, in particular 行楷, is used in everyday handwriting, even for formal communication.  From a learning perspective, 楷书 is the standard way a character should be written.

[889]

What the OP said is, "I just want to be able to write characters quickly in a way that looks like the way someone who had studied Chinese writing from childhood would write."

 

To me, that says she wants what Fang-yü Wang offers.

 

 

[evn108]

50 minutes ago, 889 said:

Chinese Cursive Script by Fang-yü Wang

Thank you! Even better, the library near me has a copy. Will check this out ASAP.