← Back to works
Work 02 / 18
← Prev: Seal Script Scroll · Li Bai
Next: Clerical Script Scroll · Flowers Bloom Again →
02 / CALLIGRAPHY · SEAL SCRIPT / 2025
Seal Script Scroll · The Long March
Mao Zedong's “The Long March” in seal script. Characters close, columns apart, the whole piece taking the vertical — the strokes picking up something of a march's rhythm.
NOTES
Studio notes
The poem has many characters and few repetitions, which makes it good practice for seal-script layout. I ruled faint pencil guides first, so all fifty-six characters would sit straight without crowding.
Characters such as “winding” and “surging”, dense with strokes, were the hardest; it took three failed drafts before this one.
After it was finished I hung it on the wall for two days, then went over it once with pale ink so the breath of the piece would hold together.
Many characters are no problem; scattered breath is.
— Gao Xinuo · studio note