In this article, we will talk about a somewhat strange question, but I believe everyone will be curious, that is: what is the minimum amount of practice to learn calligraphy or become a calligrapher? We might as well put aside other learning levels for the time being, and simply take "average daily practice volume" as an example.
Calligraphers all know that Zhao Mengfu is the most diligent and hardworking calligrapher in history. He has a good talk about "ten thousand characters in daily lessons". Can write 3 regular characters, the fastest is Xingkai, which is only 4 to 6 characters, and 200-300 characters per hour. If calculated according to 12 hours a day, then you can only write 3600 characters at most. In fact, it is impossible to write every day There are 12 hours to write, so it is really a writing robot.
As a real calligrapher, although he can’t teach thousands of characters a day, the amount of writing practice is also very considerable. Let’s do a calculation together. A calligrapher who can create freely must master at least 3,500 characters of a font The basic writing method of commonly used characters is twice as many if you know one more font. In creation, repeating characters can’t only be written in one way, you have to be able to change the style, then you have to write more than one character, just like the word “Zhi” in “Lanting” has 20 ways of writing, if each character is averaged To master 3 different writing methods, you need to be able to write 3,500*3=10,500 characters in one font, and each character needs to be practiced 20 to 50 times on average, so that is 210,000 to 525,000 words of practice. If you write 200,000 to 500,000 characters in a font, you can practice a million words if you know two fonts (many people measure how many years they have practiced, which is unscientific, and it is too inaccurate to use years as a unit. A veteran unit of measurement. It is better to measure science with the amount of practice. Some people have completed the 500,000 practice amount in three years, and some people may have never written so much in their entire lives.) This is already quite impressive, and it needs to be written on paper Drop more than 10,000 cards.
Calligraphy lovers who are getting started will immediately find that this algorithm is one-sided, because there is no absolutely proportional relationship between calligraphy and the number of exercises, and of course there are many factors that affect the success of calligraphy. However, the greatest significance of this data lies in: Diligent copying and practicing calligraphy is the only way to learn calligraphy. In other words, without a lot of practice, one cannot become a calligrapher (of course, "Jianghu calligraphers" can call themselves calligraphers without much copying and practice)
Going back to just now, we said that simply taking the "daily average volume" view is one-sided. Because, even if you have practiced a million characters, you may not be able to achieve a positive result. why? Just like memorizing 8,000 English vocabulary and phrases and still not being able to write in English or translate between English and Chinese, calligraphy works are not a simple pile of words, and the wonderfulness of each word does not mean that the whole is wonderful. Characters are written differently when placed here and there, and the amount of work required is incalculable because it has to be adapted according to the environment of the upper, lower, left, and right characters.
Therefore, being a calligrapher is very hard work. If you can achieve positive results, the hard work is worth it. Some people say that "calligraphy" is the profession with the lowest success rate among all professions, and it is also the profession with the slowest effect. It can be seen that there is some truth to this statement.
