Seal Script Scroll · Li Bai

Seal script lives on a centred brush tip: every stroke begins and ends hidden, so before the brush touches the paper I have to measure each curve in my head. I wrote this scroll very slowly — two columns in an afternoon.

I chose Li Bai to borrow the flow in his lines and offset the stiffness seal script so easily falls into. A few endings are deliberately left dry, so the whole piece can breathe.

The signature runs down the lower left in small running script, set against the roundness of the main text, with a single name seal.

Seal script is about rounding the character — and stretching the breath.

— Gao Xinuo · studio note