Comparisons of Huai Su Autobiography Versions and other works - Vincent's Calligraphy

Vincent's Calligraphy
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Graphical comparisons among the Shu and Su versions of Huai Su's Autobiography (懷素 自叙帖), Huai Su's Shengmu tie (聖母帖) and Yan Zhenqing's Draft of a Requiem to My Nephew (顏真卿 祭姪文稿)

KS Vincent Poon Jan. 2017

Sample A
A portion of the Shu version of Huai Su's Autobiography (蜀本 懷素自叙帖):



Sample B
A portion of the Su version of  Huai Su's Autobiography (蘇本 懷素自叙帖):



Sample C
A portion of Huai Su's Shengmu tie (聖母帖):


Sample D
A portion of Yan Zhenqing's (one of Huai Su's calligraphy teachers) Draft of a Requiem to My Nephew (祭姪文稿):



Preliminary Analysis
It is fairly evident that Sample B, the Su Version of the Autobiography, appears to be less consistent with the styles observed in Huai Su's other work Shengmu tie (聖母帖) (Sample C) as well as Huai Su's teacher Yan Zhenqing's representative work Draft of a Requiem to My Nephew (祭姪文稿) (Sample D).   The Su version, in my opinion, although offers dramtically different sizes of each character, lacks the dynamic and variations of each brush stroke within one character; it is as if it is written by a solid and hard brush-pen and so each stroke is comparatively boring and unlively.  The Shu Version (Sample A), however, carries more of the same dynamic and variations of each brush stroke observed in Shengmu tie (聖母帖) (Sample C) and Draft of a Requiem to My Nephew (祭姪文稿) (Sample D).  In fact, judging purely from the samples above, one could argue that the person who wrote the Shu version (Sample A) has a higher level of calligraphic skills than the person who wrote the Su version (Sample B), based solely on the amount and degree of variations within each different brush strokes.  Note that the dramatic differences in sizes of the characters are important in the aesthetics of cursive script but the variations within a brush stroke are more important in reflecting a calligrapher's skills, especially in terms of brush control.

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