Simple Does Not Mean Easy: Chinese Calligraphy Strokes

As I said in my blog post before this, I came to love Chinese Calligraphy for this simplicity in symbolism and use of characters. Though it may seem that one symbol is simple, in reality it is (and what is in the life... some of the most simplist things are the most complicated, right?).

You may look at one character and think you can just draw the lines just as they look; in any order, any shape, any size and any length. NO. This is not the case. Chinese characters must be written from top to bottom, left to right. Not only this, but the length of each stroke is important and the depth of your stroke is important as well. This makes it very hard at the beginning when all you want to do is make pretty strokes and pretty characters, but there is a system to it. Not so simple huh?

photo source: Asian Education