Riding the wind of rebirth

Seeing that Zhou Zhi really understood this time, Weng Yijun smiled and said, "People like you have been spoiled since childhood, and your teachers have fed you with good meat and vegetables. You don't care about engraving."

Zhou Zhi couldn't help but laugh. How could the word "spoiled" be applied to someone like him, who at the age of seven had to cook for the whole family during the holidays to earn pocket money?

But on second thought, what Weng Yijun meant here is the influence and cultivation of Chinese studies, as well as the appreciation, practice and even creation of calligraphy, painting, poetry and consultation. From this respect, I was really raised by my early fourth cousin, godfather, and later the three generations of Mr. Gu, and then Mr. Wang and Mr. Qi.

It's true that I have been eating fine bran since I was a child... But Zhou Zhi suddenly became secretly proud again. I ate so much fine bran and didn't have indigestion. This is also a skill!
"Elbow, you have been to the island country, so you can't just limit your vision to China." Guan Shuning said: "In fact, another reason why Chen Hongshou's prints are so highly valued is his influence on other art schools."

"Is there?" Zhou Zhi was wondering which kind of painting in the island country was related to this style of character.

"In the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, the characters were exaggerated and deformed, quite in the style of prints. What do you think?" Weng Yijun reminded.

"Shippo-yaki? Maki-e?" Zhou Zhi pondered.

"Don't think about crafts, paintings, painting styles!"

"Ukiyo-e? That's impossible..." If Chen Hongshou's painting style could be inspired by Ukiyo-e, then the influence would be really huge.

"It is Ukiyo-e! Mao Qiling recorded in "Biography of Chen Hongshou" that someone put two paintings in a bamboo tube and brought them to Japan, 'and gave them to the Japanese lord, who was very happy and gave him a banquet, rewarded him with a bag of pearls, and asked him to teach him the model brush.' This shows the influence of Chen Hongshou's paintings in Japan." Weng Yijun said.

The two paintings were rewarded with a bag of precious pearls. Because they were just copies of others, that is, "copycats", not originals, it shows that the Japanese painting community worshipped Chen Hongshou's paintings. "

Guan Shuning went on to say: "When Ukiyo-e was popular, the Japanese repeatedly reprinted and engraved Chen Hongshou's "Water Margin Leaves", which became popular for a time. As a result, the figure painting style of Ukiyo-e was greatly influenced later."

"Hahaha, is that true? I felt that the style of Utagawa Kuniyoshi's 'One Hundred and Eight Heroes of the Water Margin' that I saw in the island country was a little familiar. I thought it was influenced by the island country's cartoons, but it turns out the roots are here!"

Now it is clear. Both of them have backgrounds in the Department of Oriental Art of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and their research is not limited to China. Therefore, it is natural that they pay more attention to Chen Hongshou's prints.

After chatting about this, everyone moved to the study to watch Zhou Zhi write.

As senior experts in calligraphy and painting research, the Weng family naturally has no shortage of pens, ink, paper and inkstones, but the cost is very high. They are special re-export products exported from the mainland to Hong Kong Island.

Zhou Zhi also took advantage of this opportunity to ask Shi Bi's family to organize a batch of paper from Shuzhong, which could be regarded as a form of publicity.

However, the pens and inks in Shuzhong are indeed not very good. Those from Huzhou and Huizhou are still better.

Writing big characters is no longer a shortcoming for Zhou Zhi now. The reason is not because he practices diligently, but because he has the basic skills and the guidance of famous masters. Once the window paper is transparent, the characters are basically formed. Another reason is because he is lazy. For example, Wen Zhengming, who practiced a thousand characters a day, he didn't have the time even if he had the heart, so he could only practice big characters to maintain his level. It can be said that he lost something in one place but gained something in another. There is also an additional benefit, that is, the larger the yellow font is, the better it looks. Many fonts need to spend a lot of energy to practice from small to large, but the yellow font is the opposite. It is more difficult to write from large to small, but it is easier to write from small to large.

The fourth cousin had kept this secret from Zhou Zhi for many years. In the past, Zhou Zhi had not met so many calligraphy masters in his small county town, and he thought that they had not practiced small characters well and did not dare to write large characters. Therefore, when he occasionally wrote large characters to participate in the school calligraphy competition, he had to improvise on the spot. He gritted his teeth and struggled with medium-sized characters until he met Grandpa Qi, who told him the secret.

If his fourth cousin had told him this earlier, Zhou Zhi would definitely be like he is now, only liking big characters and not small characters, neglecting the practice of basic skills. He would never be able to write as freely as he is now.

While writing, Zhou Zhi told everyone this story, making everyone around him laugh.

Weng Wange also nodded repeatedly after hearing this: "Your elder is really a wonderful person. You really should thank him. If it weren't for this 'teaching students in accordance with their aptitude', you would not have practiced big characters in advance, and your calligraphy would definitely not have reached the level you have today."

Qi Lao also said this, and Zhou Zhi also knew that this was indeed the case. Apart from admiring his fourth cousin's superb training methods, Zhou Zhi really had no way to complain. If he had to blame someone, he could only blame himself for being stupid.

The large yellow characters are like long-bladed halberds, with the core of the characters tightly connected while the four sides are relaxed. The tension and relaxation can give the creator a lot of room to play with, as the saying goes, "the relaxed parts can allow horses to run, and the dense parts cannot allow air to pass through." The sparse and dense parts can create a beauty like music.

Guan Shuning is a connoisseur of good goods, so he specifically asked Zhou Zhi to write the title. Now that it has been written, it is even more amazing than the title of the An Siyuan Four Seasons Auction that he saw last time. Naturally, he is even more satisfied.

"What about the wood you mentioned, Elbow?" During the cleaning, Weng Wange asked the question again: "Is there any good wood in North America? Isn't mahogany used in China?"

"The scroll must be strong and light." Zhou Zhi certainly couldn't say that his knowledge of desert gold came from later generations, so he said, "Although that kind of wood is not the material for the shaft of traditional calligraphy and painting scrolls, it has a very high density, almost like red sandalwood, and must be both strong and heavy enough to be used as a painting shaft."

"The reason why red sandalwood is not used for scrolls is that although it is hard, it is rich in oil, and the oil is colored. Red sandalwood chips can even be used as fabric dye when boiled in water. It is easy to stain scrolls, so it is generally not usable, unless it is a scroll that has been aged for many, many years."

"So scrolls are usually made of tung fir, and high-end ones are made of hematite or sandalwood. Before use, they must be cleaned of oil with lime water."

"Desert gold doesn't have this problem. It grows in the desert, has very low oil content, and its natural color is also light. It won't stain the painting. It's hard and heavy, so I think it's a very suitable material."

"Isn't that too heavy?" Weng Wange asked in confusion, "A scroll that's too heavy will damage the painting, right?"

"This is easy to solve. As long as we drill a hole in the center of the scroll, we can achieve both the strength requirement and the weight requirement." Zhou Zhi smiled and said, "The ancients had problems with precision when processing hollow long axes, but we don't have that problem."

“So I decided to send them back home and give it a try then.”

"Don't wait until you send them back to China to try, try here!" Weng Wange pointed to the three large paintings on the wall and said, "With the titles and couplets you wrote, you'll have to frame them anyway, so they're ready-made materials for practice, right?" (End of this chapter)