Calligrapher Guan Da-ching: No Pain, No Gain

The daily process of copying is painstaking­ and difficult, and poses the greatest challenge for a beginner’s patience.

Guan sits in his Shi­tan Studio in Nei­hu, Tai­pei, marking a student’s brush writing homework. He meticulously checks the characters one by one. Then he holds aloft a brush dipped in red ink. He comments that this model stresses nei jin (a firm inner structure) and wai song (a more relaxed outer structure). He points to a particular character, hua (華), and circles the central point between the two “十” elements. Then he writes nei jin in small red script beside the character. He extends the central vertical stroke of the character down several millimeters, and writes wai song. He tells the student, “This way of distributing the proportions of the structure strengthens the form of the character.”

After Guan finishes marking the work, his student takes out the model that he used. Guan takes another brush made of weasel tail hair to demonstrate how to make a perfect copy.

Guan Da-ching sticks to the tradition. He becomes totally absorbed and attentive whenever he picks up a brush.

Born in 1954 in Hsin­chu, Guan is master of Chinese calligraphy, ink painting and seal carving. At a 2010 solo exhibition at the National Museum of History, he was introduced as “potentially the greatest painter and calligrapher of his age.” His landscape paintings employ delicate and graceful strokes in elegant colors. A critic has commented that his works are “simple, unadorned and generous..., sometimes employing real scenes, sometimes scenes created within his own imagination. He captures not only the magnificence of the landscape as a whole, but also allows us to glimpse the elegance and purity of its many tiny parts.”

Guan’s calligraphy is well known for his skill in clerical and semi-regular script styles, and his incorporation of the exemplary models of the Han and Wei Dynasties into his own style that bursts with dynamics and rhythm.

Guan’s work is deeply influenced by his teacher Chiang Chao-shen, a devotee of the model Jiu Cheng Gong, which is the foundation of studying brush writing for Chiang’s students.

Jiu Cheng Gong Li Quan Ming, to give it its full name, is a creation of renowned official Ou­yang Xun from the Tang Dynasty, known as a sophisticated and quite vigorous work. Despite its difficulty for learners, it has become the most popular model to copy.

“It’s inevitable that learners become frustrated because it’s so difficult to emulate well,” explains Guan. Since the model contains more than 1000 characters, copying 28 characters a week it would take a full year to complete the whole work. One has to copy all the characters three times over to begin to grasp a little of the quintessence of Ou­yang’s work.

Guan’s work Shi Tao Poem displays his technique of pure and unadorned brush strokes, the result of several decades of hard work.

In fact, Ou­yang’s model is not only a challenge for children, but also for many adults.

“My teacher often tells us that calligraphers copy Jiu Cheng Gong from childhood and continue for a lifetime,” says Wen Su­xiu, Guan’s student for more than a decade. He spent three years copying Jiu Cheng Gong before he even looked at other models, and while he is now learning new models, he still goes back to it regularly.

“Rocks rendered with flying white, trees with seal script, and bamboo executed with the eight basic calligraphy strokes.” Traditional Chinese calligraphy and ink painting share the same origins and philosophy. There are many similarities in the use of brushstrokes and lines, and the use of space is also comparable: leaving spaces between strokes within a character in writing is similar to the idea of leaving blank spaces within a painting. Copying models can not only help students structure characters accurately, but also help to reinforce the correct way of handling the brush.

“A student’s first teacher often has a major influence on their success over a lifetime. Lack of a solid foundation in copying models in the early stages will mean that trying to expand their skills—like studying seal carving—will be a major problem. A student needs to take the practice of copying models very seriously, and never give it up,” says Guan.