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Hi all,
I’m working on copying some of Yan Zhenqing’s DuoBao stele characters (颜真卿 – 多寶塔碑).
I am having some trouble with brushes. I have some very nice white cloud brushes from inkston, but they are a little too short/fat to do the effects. The brush I use most is a long mixed hair brush that seems to do a decent job, but sometimes I feel like I need a little more taper. This is an example from my usual practices (there are some issues obviously, but it is representative of the effects of my current brush).
Is there generally a brush that is especially recommended for copying Yan’s old standard script like the DuoBao Pagoda?
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Dear Amr, thanks for your question! Generally speaking, brush hair type and brush hair size are two important elements we need to consider when we choose brush. 🙂 We recommend to choose different size brush for different size of calligraphy. Also different type of brush hair is normally more suitable for one type of calligraphy/ painting than other hair types.
1, Brush Hair Type: From the information you have provided, we can decide the brush hair type. For this calligraphy style you have described, we recommend you to try combination hair brush. This is weasel hair combined with goat hair. Sometimes, Red Star *professional brush uses some very rare hair type too.
https://www.inkston.com/shops/brushes/weaselwool-combination-calligraphy-and-painting-brush/
2, Brush Hair Size: After we decide the brush type, then we need to decide brush hair size. This is also why you can find different sizes for the brush hair. Inkston also marks each brush hair size. 🙂 For most of our brushes, we have added the ‘suitable for’ section for people to know which type of calligraphy/ painting this brush would work best.
Could you tell us what is the size of the calligraphy you are practicing now? We need this to find a proper brush hair size.
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For KaiShu Regular Script, you can consider these brushes:
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Hi Yan,
Thank you for the help. I mainly practice 10cm characters, I am not sure what the best size for copying DuoBao Pagoda, but this seemed like a good size based on the quality of the details in the work.
I am still wondering if there is anything specific about Yan style in terms of brush selection.
Thanks!
Amr
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Hi Amr,
Sorry for replying late! I normally like using weasel hair brush to do Yan’s regular script style (*smaller size) because weasel hair is stiff and therefore, for me I feel it is easy to control the flow of strokes in order to make all the strokes flowing regularly and under control. And, I particular like the special elegant feeling of small size regular scripts, especially Zhao MengFu’s style. (Well, the calligraphy style is really a very personal preference. 🙂 )
For the combination hair brush you mentioned, I tested some Combination Hair brushes for this 10cm size and found that this set suits me well.
For me, I like the #2 and #3 for size of 10 cm. The #2’s brush hair size is 5.3 * 1.2 cm and the #3 is 4.3 * 1 cm. The Red Star official guide recommends these combination hair brushes for both regular scripts and grass cursive scripts. This also works fine for semi-cursive, certainly.
The Zi Hao Rabbit hair brush you have is a bit too stiff to do the style you want. I like using that brush for small scale regular script. And I particular like using it for painting. 🙂 The hair size for your brush is only 3 * 0.7 cm. It is a bit too small for the 10cm size calligraphy. 🙂
Hope this is helpful! And sorry for being late on this reply because I needed some time to try out these brushes. 🙂
kindest regards,
Yan
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