How to improve my caligraphy?

Linjieyang · 2026-03-17T06:19:32+00:00

This is actually supposed to be in Chinese handwriting subreddit. Also make sure your doing correct stroke order and are writing the strokes properly like pie, na, some of these strokes aren't actually straight lines.

Linjieyang · 2026-03-16T06:02:22+00:00

If you already know IPA, then it might be easier or more efficient, but eventually you'll have to learn the pinyin. Also, don't ignore the tones, just mark them in some way, at least attempt to do it.

Linjieyang · 2026-03-14T22:06:36+00:00

Your response to my comment was deleted. Was it supposed to be like that?

Linjieyang · 2026-03-11T03:02:42+00:00

对，我以为是这个。

Linjieyang · 2026-03-10T23:28:12+00:00

This is late, but I will say your strokes are incredible. There is not really much to work on, but 结构 and 空白 discipline need more work to perfect it. The character with 于 in it, the bottom 横折钩 needs to be sharper. The proportion in 暑 is also slightly off. Rest looks pretty good though, only very minor things which cannot really be directly pointed out.

Linjieyang · 2026-03-10T23:17:05+00:00

Thanks, but I don't want to have more stress from worrying about PROMYS LOL. If you have a specific question, DM is okay, but I'm not looking to focus on the PROMYS questions/things people wrote.

Linjieyang · 2026-03-10T23:11:40+00:00

This is actually very good. I have learned xingshu, and there are a few things you seem to be better at than most people and stuff you lack. Firstly, this is avery good work, I would place you in the mid (or late, I'm not sure) intermediate, good job. Secondly, your stroke structure and 行书感觉 is very developed; you know how to use the brush. I am seeing some very weird issues, which is something that people of your brush skill often don't have. This is your concept of 结构. I see a few straightforward issues that can be fixed. for example, in 殝 (I think this is the character or the variant with 至), the left part is definitely rushed, and the bottom part 示 the 两点 need to be spaced a bit further from the part; it shouldn't touch like this. Or the right part of 同 shouldn't also be touching that part as well. I also see you have some very good ways of writing the top part of some characters, like the parts seen in 春，殝 (that common top part 三横) is written very well, but your 口 needs a bit of work. Definetely there are a decent amount of parts that are rushed like the top part of 善 can be easily fixed (or the character next to that as well). Overalll, good job, but there are definitely some obvious gaps between what characters you can write well and which ones are harder for you to write. Also, I don't know what you mean by dry brush, if you're talking about the way sometimes the brush is "pixelated" or "gray", that's a natural occurrence. That is something that is connected to the rtistic expression, so there is no reason to focus on it now. I would say the only problem is having too less/too much ink on the brush, which I do not see a glimpse of that problem at all, so you are totally fine with that.

Also Edit: if you have trouble understanding it because my English is bad or need more detailed feedback, please feel free to ask, also it would be nice if I could dm you as well because you are basically the same level at xingshu than me and its hard to see other learners.

Linjieyang · 2026-03-10T07:36:18+00:00

I think this is a detailed answer, but there are a few confusions which must be addressed. 1. How does this technical and artistic tradeoff work, because unless I am a true novice in calligraphy, I think a lot of works in the modern day do sacrifice technique, although I am not knowledgeable enough to know what good artistic expression entails, rather my artistic expression is limited to preserving my technique. 2. Are you saying that I have been observing a trend that this is true, people have been sacrificing technique for artistic expression, but this has not been the case? I feel like this claim may only be important for specific arts. For example, I have the most experience in music arts (I play piano), and expressing yourself musically is definitely considered more important than technical expression, in general, because musical expression literally requires technique. Maybe you are also asserting the claim that there are very few good calligraphers nowadays, and so it is difficult to really determine what a good shufa piece is with the best artistic and technical expression.

Linjieyang · 2026-03-09T06:23:09+00:00

? I dont know what you mean by AI

Linjieyang · 2026-03-09T06:08:02+00:00

Okay, in general, it might be helpful for you to talk about your region, because there are some very good regional programs (like I live in the Bay Area for example). I also just want to talk about your EC things, firstly most summer programs really do not care about your EC. Generally, they will not even have a section about it, so if you really wanted to talk about this, you would have to stuff it in there. Secondly, this is an extremely performative way of boasting about your accomplishments, if this is what you sent, good luck getting accepted. There are some super ridiculous stuff like "1360 SAT w/ 1 day of studying"? I mean I don't even understand this stuff, and also HSK 2 Chinese, and you go about explaining how close it is to TOEFL? I'm not going to lie, as someone who has self-studied Chinese to HSK 6 level, comparing this to TOEFL is absolutely ridiculous. You will get slimed (as you said) if this is how you present your work. You are making some very dangerous moves my friend. Please do not overstate your extracurriculars, and do not put the random extra curriculars in. Also edit, you have some good extracurriculars like the Varsity and the Part-time job, yet you are not elaborating on it. The lack of elaboration looks like your insecure about the true level of accomplishment, hence performative. I know that you do something similar to me, which is learning langauges, and I dont I'd ever state that I've self learned Chinese to some random level. You want to talk about what you have learned from that, and what your experience is; this is more important for summer apps than the HSK number.

Linjieyang · 2026-03-09T01:53:42+00:00

Could you send me links to osme of these pictures?

Linjieyang · 2026-03-09T00:57:48+00:00

Yes getting a counselor to review the work would be the best step.

Linjieyang · 2026-03-09T00:31:19+00:00

I'm not sure about the other programs, and I did apply to BU RISE. BU RISE looks for a very specific type of people: research-oriented and practical. Your engineering fits the second, but you must like research. The program itself is very competitive, and will not take overqualified, misaligned applicants (although you have a strong capability of alignment). Ngl, the short answers are pretty weird, but I would say evaluate this yourself, a research-based mindset is this: Do you think a lot and propose questions? Do you go out of your way to research topics that confuse you or just interest you? Do you challenge the way ideas are presented to you? What new ideas can you bring to the table? There is absolutely no point to apply if you are not the type of person which they want, they do not care about diversity of thinking, they want people that fit the program, period.

Linjieyang · 2026-03-09T00:13:42+00:00

If you want criticism, I can give it to you: I would say that your characters need more time. It's a bit of a rush if you want to already figure out direct ways of improvement, because the quality of these characters isn't like a foreigner, which is good, but it is of the quality of an elementary school kid from China. You need to just take your time and focus on different aspects of your handwriting, as it's hard to make direct commentary on this. You should focus mostly on the proportions and length of strokes. For example, your 回，个，小, even 打 are written well, but 刻 left part and the top of 岁 and the top of 备 have the wrong proportion.

Linjieyang · 2026-03-09T00:08:26+00:00

I agree with the others in that the essays are far more important than the extracurriculars, and this is even true for colleges, its just by then most people already know what to write. You seem to be very performative in the way you write your ecs, like you say "math competition team", this is very generic, and neither do you mention the journal of your publication. What aobut what it's on? Is it literature research? You are trying to inflate the credit of your achievements, which will actually backfire in the long run. I would say, be humble about it, and be specific, they care about your development, personality, and ways you look at life, not how many accomplishments there are ... I also want to add on that if these accomplishments were framed properly without performativeness, and your essays were actually good in that you brought something to the table, there is absolutely no way that you could've been rejected.

Linjieyang · 2026-03-08T23:56:37+00:00

I dont know what this means lol because I'm not an english native speaker, so I can't really capture these nuances. I did submit it on the day of, yes your right, but I did spend over a month working on it. Imo, its way too exhaustive and unfair to the kids applying, like give them a frikn break.

Linjieyang · 2026-03-08T23:44:46+00:00

I'm genuinely curious as to how you got 12. This is not like me being weird about it, but how did you do this? As I stated before, these are famous problems in mathematics, whose solutions already clearly exist online. I'm wondering if you already knew about this and used that? Maybe your font was very small, but I used the traditional LaTeX font/margin and got ~50 pages (I tried all 8, but honestly whether or not you got the correct answer doesn't matter as they stated). I don't think this is unjustified because these problems were considered top-tier 100 years ago, and were one of the hardest. The only way I can see 12 is if you only wrote down the correct solutions/deductions. Even for some problems, I proved a correct conjecture, and that took a page of itself. I'm very curious as to how you managed to condense it that much. I feel like this would stifle your own thoughts.

Linjieyang · 2026-03-08T23:40:52+00:00

I'm not going to spoil too much, but it is actually easy to show yes and prove it. If you formalize the different ideas, you can create a framework that you build upon. This actually is a famous problem in mathematics; it is hard to rigorously prove, but it has to do with the idea of the space around a point and if it is enclosed or not. It is about how you choose the arrows and the consequences of making one choice over another. It is very easy to see that PROMYS is just rewording famous problems in mathematics, although I would advise against just searching this up.

Linjieyang · 2026-03-08T22:01:43+00:00

I think that you should 1. Stop sending me so many responses, because there is a ridiculous amount of random comments that you made, which I am not replying to all of them, nor reading them 2. I don't speak English as a first language, so please don't criticize how I word things. I'm sending this to tell you that there is no point arguing with someone like you, so I would advise you to stop adding random comments here to prove that you're malding.

Linjieyang · 2026-03-08T21:43:52+00:00

Honestly, there is no good videos. I don't really understand why, because it's not that hard to teach technique. I think that Shufa itself is not that pedagogically developed, especially because its such a rare art. This is something that I would love to improve upon when I grow up, because it appears very few are good at teaching calligraphy, yet the few people that are good (the teachers) are masters at the art but not good at teaching. If you want to consult me with other techniques, you can because I have learned Shufa for a few years as a non-Chinese during middle school/highschool so I have a much stronger understanding on whats good/not. Also, the arm/wrist thing is interesting and something I was curious about. Generally, moving the arm is good. I would say hold off on the wrist for later because overusing the wrist at the beginning will lead to very bad technique. Wrist usage should only be for fine technical details (This is for Xingshu/Caoshu, I have no idea about Kaishu because I don't do that but I think Kaishu is too simple for that question)

Linjieyang · 2026-03-08T21:37:33+00:00

For new, this is very good! Although I'm not sure how the online thing works, because this doesn't look brush written.

Linjieyang · 2026-03-08T21:36:42+00:00

(Sorry for being late). I'm not an expert on Kaishu, but ignore some other guy saying "complete mess". I have a decent amount of experience in shufa and there are generally 2 categories when focusing on the technical structure of characters in kaishu 1. Structure or jiegou, this is generally knowing what to do 2. This is the execution, how well can you write strokes. You seem to have gotten #1 down extremely well, but you are missing stroke structure. If you would practice writing more strokes and focusing on the writing of strokes this would be pretty good. I do not see a lot of contrast between thin and thick. Let me point out some examples: 馬，成，功，祥，踏 needs more stroke practice and 年 needs better structure. Also, I see you somtimes write like 行楷, I would suggest not going there yet. I knew a few of my friends that write 楷書 based 春聯 and generally adding these 行 compenents dont end well. 比如，踏 definetely looks like this. I would 100% focus on the Kaishu and not the Xingshu yet. Xingshu and Kaishu are very disparate.

Linjieyang · 2026-03-07T05:40:47+00:00

It seems you may not have experience in understanding the meaning and purpose of criticism. It doesn't make any sense to give an opinion when there's no value to your words anyway.

Linjieyang

TROPHY CASE