Mastering the grip of a brush in Chinese calligraphy is the first challenge for beginners. Because a pen is held lower than a brush, most people will try to hold the brush low. This makes it difficult for the tip to maintain control, and lines tend to appear heavy. If you hold the brush too loosely with only a few fingers, it can become wobbly or collapse. This results in stroke ends that lack definition and leaves a weak center for the line. It is best to begin with the brush higher on your hand, allowing the tip to work from a vertical position rather than dragging from an angle.
Before attempting any characters, dip the brush into the ink and practice making simple strokes. Observe how the ink flows through the brush tip and the weight of the stroke. Is too much ink coming through? Is the ink too dry for this type of paper? Can you feel if the brush is wobbly in your hand or collapsing with pressure? If you are making lines too wide, you may have used too much ink or applied too much pressure while moving across the page. If lines are too light, it may be a problem with ink volume or the brush not having enough water. When practicing strokes, notice what the brush does before the stroke, how it travels, and how the brush exits the stroke. This observation helps you learn whether you are gripping too hard and how much pressure you need to use for different strokes. You may find that you are gripping the brush as if it were a pen instead of letting it glide across the paper.
Try this: hold the brush as if you were gripping a pen and make a quick horizontal line across a piece of paper. Notice the stroke ends. Then try the correct method of holding a brush to make a similar horizontal stroke. Notice the difference in the entry, the travel and the exit from the paper. Notice that one stroke may be too thick or too thin for a line.
In order to get a consistent thickness of line, you must relax your wrist. When the wrist is relaxed, it enables more control over the weight of the brush to vary the thickness of a stroke. If the brush is collapsing while writing lines or stroke ends, try gripping it higher up. The next thing to consider is the angle of the brush. Try keeping the brush more vertical instead of angled so the tip of the brush does not collapse. If you can achieve this, the tip of the brush will react to the amount of pressure applied. Press harder for a thick line or less pressure for a thin line. This is an essential part of the art of Chinese calligraphy. Without proper grip, there is very little differentiation between horizontal strokes, vertical strokes, dots, hooks, and turning strokes.
When making a model character, keep the same brush grip, and try not to restrict the movement in a character to using your fingers only. Try using the grid to guide you as you slowly write out the characters so that you can notice the balance within the spaces of a character. The beginner often concentrates on drawing the outside of a character, and as a result, may try to draw too many characters at one time, or make characters too close together. It is better to write a single stroke in a single character, allowing the characters to dry on their own, then compare the character with the model. Did the brush grip affect the character? Are any of the strokes too thick or too thin? Is one stroke too heavy? Does the character have proper balance? You want to make sure the grip does not prevent you from making an even, controlled stroke in the beginning of a character or stroke end.
A correct grip in a calligraphy session should not look formal. It should not feel rigid. It is more important to use the correct grip because the quality and consistency of a stroke is much easier to achieve. During your next calligraphy session, you will know you are using the correct grip when you notice: a cleaner entry, steadier weight, less dragging across the paper, and the brush does not collapse before the end of the stroke.