Wang Mian is a Chinese historical and cultural celebrity, when we were in the first grade of primary school, we learned his story in the textbook, saying that he was poor, a shepherd boy, herding cattle for others, but he worked hard, keen on practicing painting lotus, and eventually became a well-known painter, China Post issued a special commemorative stamp of "Ru Lin Wai Shi", the first one was "Wang Mian Painting Lotus".
("Wang Guan Painting Lotus" and set of "Ru Lin Wai Shi" stamps)
In fact, Wang Mian loved to paint plum blossoms all his life, and "painting lotus" is likely to be a plot deliberately changed by the novelist Wu Jingzi, with the intention of pinning his own feelings of "coming out of the mud without staining". The paintings of Wang Guan that we can see in modern times are basically "MoMei", such as:
(Part of Wang Mian's "Momei" in the spring auction of the 12th anniversary of Beijing Poly)
The direction of our study is seal engraving, and the reason why the crown is mentioned is because he is an important epoch-making icon. Liu Ji, a man of the late Yuan and early Ming dynasties, has three records of seal engraving in his Fei Xue Lu volume, two of which are about the crown of the king:
At the beginning, no one, the person who carved the seal with anther stone, also from the beginning of the mountain farmer. Shannong used Chinese to engrave books, printed very ancient, Jiangyou Xiong's scarf was quite stuffy, but the text was ugly, see shannong seal, great sigh, and said: "As soon as the heavenly horse comes out, all the horses are broken", so they abandoned everything. (Huang Wei, Compilation of Chinese Seal Theory, Rongbaozhai Publishing House, 2010, 216 pp.)
There is an important piece of news here, that is, the literati themselves carved the stone seals, probably starting from the crown of the king, who was probably the first person to carve the seal.
Of course, the front of Zhao Mengfu, Wu Yan, there are also works, however, they are seal seals, but do not engrave, the reason is very simple, there is no suitable stone, to the crown, found the anther stone (specifically do not know which kind of stone corresponds to the present), in short, the literati can be carved, no longer need to fake hand carved stone craftsmen.
Let's start with the crown.
Crown of kings (1287?) -1359？ ZiYuan Zhang, boiled stone mountain farmer, rice cow weng, hui ji wai shi, plum blossom house owner, Mr. Jiuli, Jiangnan guke, Jiangnan wild man, Shanyin wild man, etc., Zhejiang Zhuji people, born in a peasant family, lost his father at an early age, herded cattle for the Qin family, used the time of cattle herding every day to learn painting, and at night went to the monastery to sit on the lap of the Buddha statue, read under the Changming lamp, "will audit Han nature and hear different things, recorded as a disciple, then as a Confucian", Wang Mian Nengshi, good at painting ink plums, after becoming famous, he lived in seclusion in Jiuli Mountain, selling paintings for a living, making friends with many monks, and talking to them about Zen on a daily basis. In the theory of painting, borrowing the dialectical thinking of Buddhism, he put forward the painting theory of "the law cannot be, the law cannot be the law, and now when the Rufa is paid, the law is he zengfa", painting plum with rouge as a plum blossom bone, with a unique style, and is also good at writing bamboo stones.
(Wang Xijing, "Statue of Wang Mian")
Sha Menghai believes that Wang Mian is the third generation of philologists (the first generation is Mi Fu, the second generation is Zhao Mengfu and Wu Yan), and Wen Peng and He Zhen are the fourth generation of philologists (Sha Menghai, "History of Printing Studies", Xiling Printing Society Publishing House, 1999, 194 pages), which shows the role of Wang Mian in inheriting the past and the future, and the reason why Wang Mian is not famous in the history of seal engraving is because Wang Mian is not a descendant of the family like Wen Peng (One hundred and forty years after Wang Mian's death, Wen Peng was born), Wang Mian has no disciples, and his fame is not as good as that of Wen Jia, so Wang Mian has no disciples and is not as famous as The Wen family, therefore, It is also natural that the crown was despised by the literati of the later generations of seal carving, but it was Wen Peng who became the recognized originator of seal carving.
Since the crown is so important, of course, our "Reading Seal" series must choose one of his works. So we chose this side of the "descendants of the surname Ji", as shown in the picture:
(Wang Mian and his descendants with the surname Ji)
Obviously, The crowned king's surname is "Wang", why is it "a descendant of the surname Ji"? Because one of the Wang surnames originated from the Ji surname, Prince Jin, the son of King Zhou Ling, was deposed as a commoner because of his duty, and his son Zong Jing was still serving as a situ in the middle of the dynasty, and the people of shi were called "Wang Family" because they were descendants of the royal family, and this clan took "Wang" as the clan, and the two major royal surnames of the "Langya Wang Clan" and the "Taiyuan Wang Clan" all originated from this Branch of the Wang Clan, and the Wang Crown was proud to be a descendant of the Ji surname, so he had this seal.
When practicing this seal, at least pay attention to the following three points:
1. See the mistakes in the rules, and see the differences in the regularity. This is a four-character seal in Han and Bai chinese, and the printing surface uses the Miao seal method, but the four characters do not strictly adopt the chapter format of "equally divided printing surface", but the four characters are designed according to the complex and simple glyphs, as shown in the figure:
(The printing space occupied by the four characters)
The space occupied by the four characters is completely different: the word "Ji" horizontally exceeds the vertical centerline, and the word "Sun" exceeds the horizontal center line vertically, so the word "zi" is squeezed into the right and lower space, becoming the word with the smallest placeholder. In this way, under the premise that the word "surname" maintains a standard quarter of the place, there is both relative stability and jaggedness in the rules, so as not to make the rules completely sluggish.
Of course, this is not suitable for all four-character Han white seals, which are the "variations" of the four-character white seal, not the "changing grid", because the upper and lower four words of this square seal have the same parts on the left and right sides, so it can be "changed" in this way, the following one will say.
2. Changes and echoes of the same text components. Following the above, the four words of this square seal have particularity, "Ji" and "surname" are on the right side of the same place, there is a "female" department, "son" and "sun" have a "child" part on the left side, so that the same text parts are on the same side of the situation, if not handled well, it will be sluggish, rigid, or there will be two words "touching the pen" phenomenon, extremely difficult to deal with, the processing of this square seal, quite clever:
(Variations and echoes of homomorphic parts)
The word "Ji" shifts to the left, and the following "surname" word is staggered, although there is a "female" part, and even the seal method of the "female" part has not changed, but because the left part of "Ji" expands, the upper "female" part is biased to the left, which is actually closer to the central axis of the printing surface, similarly, the two "subs" on the left, the "sub" in the upper part are because they are single characters, so naturally they are more biased to the right than the lower "sub", which is actually closer to the central axis of the Indian surface, and the combination of the left and right words on the upper part of the printing surface is just staggered with the lower two words. It not only preserves the change, but also makes full use of the homomorphic echo to form the rhythm of the printing surface, ensuring that although the square seal is jagged and lively, it is not chaotic at all. If you encounter the same chapter problems, you can learn from them.
3. Bite and give in between words. As we said earlier, the biggest difference between the literati seal and the craftsman's seal is the "change", in that it is not a simple "straight", not a simple "neat", but through the literati to deal with a lot of "changes" and "fun", such as "bite", "concession". Biting and letting go makes the printing surface more compact, reunited, and more integrated, which is very important, which is the characteristic of the "square inch" art of seal engraving.
(Bite and concession)
The bite of "Ji" and "Zi" is a direct adhesion, and the bite of "Sun" and "Zi" is that the "system" is arched upwards, and it just arches into the open space under the right of "Zi", and the bite is tight, these two treatments make the left and right sides of the printing surface all bite together. The left and right bites of the "surname" are also handled "silently", which is very clever.
In the Ming Dynasty, Xu Shangda's "Yinfa Reference" once said:
Whoever writes in the seal must be like a family, a common faction, a mutual friend, no square circle, no rank and a considerable rank, God everywhere, but only its essence, that is, those who are good at the field, can not advocate for themselves, know this, and then can grammar. It is believed that the phases of words are gathered in one seal, that is, if people gather together, those who are on the left must be ordered to look to the right, those who are on the right must be ordered to look to the left, those who are in the center must be ordered to look at each other, and those who are in the upper place must also be ordered to bow down, and those who are below must also be ordered to lean up. If you gain affection, you will be full of vitality; if you lose your affection, you will only get the form. (Han Tianheng, Selected Papers on Printing in Past Dynasties, 1999, 116 pp.)
Memorizing these two passages well is important for understanding the rules. When creating a printed manuscript, think more about these two paragraphs. The most exquisite use of these theories is Wu Changshuo, and everyone can observe his prints more.
([Pudding Reading] No. 85, some of the pictures come from the Internet, the copyright belongs to the original copyright owner)