A Gwailo's View of Han Zi ! A Blog featuring my experiments with Han Zi and digital typographic art and articles on Chinese derived characters. Also some articles on Chinese characters in general and their use of multiple Asian languages.
#inktober
20th century "Expressionism" Ink Scroll
A notable tendency from the late 19th century onwards and throughout the 20th century is an looser bolder "wet" style of ink and brush. I suspect the availability of photographic illustrations for text books has encouraged this along with collections going on tour through major cities along with more people being able to buy exported heavier papers?
There were originally said to be 800 versions of copies of the 1000 character Classic created by Zi Yong to provide student monks with calligraphy examples. These were distributed across Eastern Zhejiang and surviving copies exist in various collections!
For October lets look at some Classics ! Tree and Rock by Su Shi
Yes #SuShi also known as #SuDongPo
He was one of those Famous Chinese Poets who had the "Trifecta" of skills writing poems doing calligraphy and painting too! This is one to study! Fortunately later collectors refrained themselves to adding their seals at the edges of the image !
Notice how theres actually only a few strokes due to the use of dry brush and the dense small solid blacks for detail emphasizing the texture of the rock and the shoots.
Minimal yet maximal!
