The rest remarkable calligraphic characteristic of The Art of Calligraphy of Sun Guoting is “the application of the writing brush”. He said: “a stroke varies with the rise and fall of the hair of the writing brush; a dot differs from the ways of the hair’s making pauses, turning and lifting.” What he said actually portrays his own way of brush-applying, which is embodied most typically in seven or eight lines just following the statement “If nothing is unsuitable for being easy and smooth in writing, there will be no place for the ignorance to exist in”. (At first I just liked the several lines by my direct perception. Through repeatedly copying them as my model of learning, I finally won the second place in a model-copying competition among all the students of each year of my school of calligraphy.) The dots and strokes here, with rhythmically light and heavy touches, are round and vigorous, strokes are well accompanied and coordinated with each other and the whole work is interesting and charming. It is because the brush is flexibly controlled with wrist and elbow and the tip of the brush continuously lifted and pressed that the ink contained in the brush hair playing the role in stroke variation sometimes gets filled and sometimes dry and sometimes moist. The strokes are not just made, simply and softly, and so they reveal a sense of being three-dimensional. As my experiences show, the writing techniques here are as follows: at the turning or final stroke, press with strength the brush first, and then lift it immediately; after that turn the brush or finish the final stroke. For example, the Chinese characters “罕” and “其” in the phrase “罕陈其要” (meaning “rarely state its main points”);  “中”, “画” in “中画执笔三手”（which means that ‘there are three ways of holding a writing-brush when painting’）. The turning strokes of the four characters are made this way: pressing the brush, first, lifting it at once and making a turning again. The last strokes of Chinese characters “庶”, “既” in the phrase “庶欲弘既往之风规”(meaning ‘hope to be able to develop the styles and principles of the past’) are written in the way: press the brush and make a pause, then lift the brush and move towards the right. Written in this way, the stroke lines look vivid and vigorous. Seeing the active, easy and smooth characters, one must be able to think of the manner of the calligrapher at the moment of creating the calligraphy: writing looking perfectly relaxed and being in high spirits. This could be a unique progress in innovating the ancient rulers; the progress is made by Sun Guoting who has “No thinking but is the most meticulous and no practice but is the most effective”.

It may be said that the book To Study the Art of Calligraphy is only my own understanding of studying Sun Guoting’s The Art of Calligraphy in the past more than a decade years. Owing to my limited ability and learning, it might happen that for one thing cited, ten thousand might have been left out in my book. I firmly believe, however, that The Art of Calligraphy of Sun Guoting is not only consummate and perfect in calligraphic art, but also broad-minded, brilliant and incomparable in learning, philosophy and the elegance of writing style. I think its position in the field of calligraphic theory is just the same as that of The Red Mansion in Chinese literature. To learn and study the art of calligraphy, the first thing to do is to learn and understand The Art of Calligraphy. Sincerely resenting the book to all the readers, I hope to have an opportunity to probe into the great work together with the seniors in calligraphy, experts and people of the same trade. The purpose of the book mainly lies in popularizing and spreading the excellent ancient inheritance of art theory to serve for the development, prosperity and enhancement of today’s art and literature.