Painting sand and printing clay

Painting sand and printing clay

Drawing sand and printing mud, Chinese vocabulary, pronunciation Hu à sh à y à NN í, means the ancients' image summary of the experience of using pen, until now, it still has a positive and practical guiding significance. Source: on calligraphy by Cai Xizong in Tang Dynasty.

explain

”When the sharp cone is drawn into the sand, the two sides of the sand rise naturally, and a line is concave in the middle to describe the center and the hidden front of the pen, which are calm and attentive. When the seal is printed on the mud, the mud is also raised, and the shape is concave, which means that the center hidden front of the pen is calm and has no beginning and ending marks. It has a great sense of writing first, stable and accurate. In a word, drawing sand and printing clay is the ancient people's image summary of the experience of using pen, which has positive and realistic guiding significance.

source

"Painting sand and printing clay" means to use a pen like "painting sand like a cone and printing clay like a seal". It is said that Chu suiliang first proposed that the use of pen should be "like printing clay", then Zhang Xu thought hard, and then he realized it by drawing sand with a cone. As for "painting sand and printing clay", Huang Tingjian understood it like this: "painting sand like a cone, printing clay like a seal, the meaning of which is in front of the pen."