Chinese Calligraphy Made Easy - Book Review

'Chinese Calligraphy Made Easy' is a beautiful book, combining great content and intelligent design. It is also functional, with a fold-out flap in front and back with a handy lettering stroke guide. The fold-out gives the cover a solid feel. Rebecca Yue's logical approach to Chinese lettering makes the complex characters achievable even for beginners. I don't often give five stars to books, but this is one that I recommend wholeheartedly.

'Chinese Calligraphy Made Easy' begins with a section on materials, including construction and use of Chinese brushes, plus tips on buying and caring for equipment. The basic calligraphy strokes are then carefully explained in detail. Sometimes these strokes can be quite complex, with several movements required for a single mark, but Yue's combination of diagram and text makes it easy to understand. Each stroke is accompanied by a 'troubleshooter' section illustrating common errors and their solution.

Yue then goes on to explain five 'golden rules' which govern the order of brush-strokes when writing Chinese characters. Applying these helps you create properly balanced characters and gives structure, just as the letters of the English alphabet need to be formed with correct stroke-order to write a word. A range of useful Chinese characters are presented in this section.

Rebecca Yue then introduces different Chinese scripts: the ancient 'Chuan Shu' - seal script, the formal 'Kai Shu' - pattern script, 'Li Shu', which she describes as 'clerkly script', with a wide, light feel; 'Tsao Shu' - the artistic 'grass' script, and the modern 'Hsing Shu' - running script, which is commonly used.

There are several projects in the book, such as how to make a traditional writing book, greeting cards to make, such as career, marriage, hard times and good fortune, and instructions for mounting Xuan paper artwork. A selection of useful greetings is included as a reference.