East Asian Calligraphy/The horizontal stroke
The horizontal stroke is a very common stroke, going horizontally from left to right. It is found in some form in nearly every Korean letter, especially the vowels.
Examples of the horizontal stroke:
| Chinese characters | all the strokes of: 一 二 三 the second and third strokes of 上 the first stroke of the tree radical: 木、村、枚 the last two strokes of the sun radical: 日、早、昔 the last three strokes of the eye radical: 目、省、眠 and so on |
| Japanese kana 1 | Katakana: エ、オ、キ、ケ、コ、サ、チ、テ、ナ、ニ、ホ、モ、ユ、ヨ、ラ、ロ、ヲ |
| Korean jamo | ㄷ, ㅌ, ㄸ, ㄹ, ㅁ, ㅂ, ㅃ, ㅈ, ㅉ, ㅊ, ㅋ, ㅌ, ㅍ, ㅎ, ㅏ, ㅐ, ㅑ, ㅒ, ㅓ, ㅔ, ㅕ, ㅖ, ㅗ, ㅘ, ㅙ, ㅚ, ㅛ, ㅜ, ㅝ, ㅞ, ㅟ, ㅠ, ㅡ, ㅢ |
1 It's harder to determine what a stroke is in hiragana, since hiragana is inherently cursive. Stroke-like shapes can be found in あ、お、き、け、さ、す、せ、た、ち、な、は、ほ、ま、む、も、よ、を.
In general, a horizontal stroke is defined by the following properties:
- They slant upwards.
- Theoretically, all horizontal strokes should slant upwards at a very slight angle.
- They start hard and end hard.
- Horizontal strokes don't trail off. The instant before you lift your pencil / pen off the paper should be one where you're applying force onto the paper.
- However, there is a tendency where horizontal strokes do trail off, if they are on the left half of a character, is not joined by another stroke on the right end, and is the last stroke in that side of the character. This arises naturally, because the pen / pencil / brush goes on immediately to write the right side of the character without stopping. Also as a result of this, the stroke tends to point diagonally upwards, and straight.
- They may curve down at the end.
- Like the dot stroke, this is mostly a consequence of the second point above. As you apply more and more force you tend to draw your hand closer to your body, hence curving the stroke downwards.
- However, please don't overdo this. This feature should be a natural result of point 2 above. If you find yourself curving the stroke deliberately, then you're definitely overdoing it. If it doesn't curve, then leave it. Horizontal strokes don't need to curve — this applies here even more than it does with the dot stroke.
Let's take a look at three examples, the Chinese character for "three", the Japanese katakana ni, and the Korean syllable for pa:
File:CJK 1-02-01.PNG
All of the strokes of "three", all of the strokes of "mi", and first, fourth, and last strokes for "pi" all show the properties of horizontal strokes.
To show a situation where the horizontal doesn't trail off, here are two Chinese characters, for "bean" and "head", respectively.
File:CJK 1-02-02.PNG
Note that the character "bean" is found on the left side of the character for "head". The last stroke of "bean", a horizontal stroke, is made to trail off and point up.