Mark Obama Ndesandjo
Calligraphy
 
Strategy No. 22: Close the thief's exit and destroy him.
Strategy No. 36: When all else fails, run away
Strategy No. 20: Play on dissension in the enemy camp, and attack in the confusion.

Calligraphy (The 36 Strategies of War)

Chinese calligraphy or shufa (书法) is a unique and rich art  form more than three thousand years old, and has evolved and influenced Asian art in innumerable ways. The tools are simple: rice paper, a soft hair brush and black ink. Although Chinese has more than 40,000 characters, it only uses seven basic strokes. Because of the malleability of the hair brush and the innumerable permutations of each character, it is quite difficult to master. If the stroke is too fast, the result is an ugly white gap. If too slow, the ink bleeds over the paper. Ideal calligraphy, therefore, is almost like dancing in its blending of speed, direction and pressure.

Following is a selection of shufa by Mark from the 36 Strategies of ancient China.


(Photography courtesy of Mr Liu Chunmin of Shenzhen)
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Strategy 13: Beat the Grass and Kill the Snake (打草惊蛇)
Here Mark writes the characters in one stroke, without allowing the ink brush to leave the paper. It is very difficult since not only does one have to link the characters in a meaningful and aesthetic way, but also one must conserve the ink in the pen. As a result the first strokes are often very fast (because there's a lot of ink) and the final strokes are very slow (to allow the ink to run). The last character represents the wiggling of a snake.


More on the 36 Strategies

The West had Machiavelli. the East had the 36 Strategies. There are two famous Classical Chinese works on the strategies of war that are well known in China. Sun Zi's Art of War is the most famous. Less well known in the West is the 36 Strategies, a later compilation of war strategies finalized during the Ming Dynasty.  Finding no English translation of the work, Mark decided to translate himself, and in the process, fell in love with the beautiful characters.  He decided in 2010 to paint the 138 characters of this work, comprising 30 4-character and 6 3-character sets, and finally completed the entire set of 36 frames in August 2011. Different calligraphic techniques used include:

Yi Bi Hua  One stroke writing

Xing Shu Cursive script

Cao Shu The most cursive of Chinese scripts.It simplifies the multiple strokes of the classical Kai and Xing scripts.

Xing Cao A blend of the two scripts

 

Mark's style is more individualistic than traditional calligraphy. His intent is to have each work viewed on at least two levels: reading the characters or just admiring the beauty of the Chinese line as it explores the paper.Enjoy!!


Useful Links


https://sf.kdd.cc A remarkable library of chinese calligraphy. Warning: need to know chinese to use it well!

Some calligraphy articles here and here