Calligraphy couplets. Cao Quan Stele: Calligraphy couplets.

Author: Xu Qinghua
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-12-01
Features: Beginners in calligraphy must start by copying ancient steles and tablets, striving for strokes, structures, and styles to resemble the originals. Once copying is mastered, the desire to create one's own works often leads to failure. The transition from copying to creation is not easy to cross, and some may spend their entire lives failing to do so or may go astray. Selecting characters from the copied steles to compile into works is an excellent method. However, the text in the works may not all be found in the copied steles, even if they are found, they cannot be pieced together to achieve coherence in size, weight, inclination, and mutual correspondence. For this reason, we decided to invite experienced calligraphers to edit and publish a series of couplets and poetic works composed of characters selected from famous steles and tablets of past dynasties, using computer image processing technology to strive for the most perfect presentation to readers.
The full name of Cao Quan Stele is Han Cao Quan Stele of Heliang County, also known as Cao Jingwan Stele. It was erected in the second year of the Zhongping era of Emperor Ling of the Eastern Han Dynasty and unearthed in the early Ming Wanli era in today's Heyang County, Shaanxi. After the Kangxi era of the Qing Dynasty, it broke and lost some characters, and was moved to the Xi'an Stele Forest in 1956. It is written in clerical script, with twenty-four lines. Zhu Lizhen once remarked on this stele: "It is unrestrained and self-contented, with a unique style that later generations cannot even imitate to a small degree. This is the true face of the Han people, with the cracks of walls and the leaks of roofs all captured here." The compilers spent several months carefully selecting and comparing characters for each couplet, ensuring both faithfulness to the original and that all strokes came from the stele. They avoided rigid copying and appropriately used computer technology for coordination, ultimately completing this work.