Compendium of Calligraphy Books. Cursive Script. 1

Author: Ma Yingxian
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-06-01
Features: The Shupu is a representative work of Sun Guoting's cursive script, renowned for its exquisite brushwork, dynamic and clean structure, vibrant ink and color, and harmonious dry and wet, thick and thin tones. Its natural bone structure has made it a favored choice for countless cursive script learners. The Shupu contains over 4,000 characters, with more than 1,000 unique characters. This book compiles them separately into one volume. During the arrangement process, every effort was made to preserve the original style and appearance of the characters, avoiding any individual scaling to maintain the font's integrity. As many characters were retained as possible, with only a few severely damaged and illegible characters removed. Fortunately, identical characters are grouped together, facilitating readers' identification and preventing misinterpretation of the original forms. The ordering of characters in this book follows the character sequence in the Xinhua Dictionary for different characters, while identical characters are arranged according to their appearance order in the original script. To minimize waste, line breaks are made only when the first letter of the Pinyin changes, with no spaces inserted in between. For clarity and ease of reference, identical characters are annotated only once at the first occurrence, aiding in quick identification. This volume serves as an excellent model for beginners learning cursive script, offering both comprehensive and selective practice. It not only reduces the difficulty of recognizing characters but also enhances practice efficiency, shortening the learning curve. For calligraphers creating works based on Shupu as their source of characters, this book offers numerous conveniences. First, characters can be located easily by their Pinyin order, and all instances of the same character are presented together for a comprehensive view. If a character is not present, no time is wasted searching. Second, identical characters are grouped, allowing for easy comparison of variations in brushwork and structure, which aids in selecting the most suitable style for creative purposes.