Yan Zhengqing Style

My sensei turned me on to a style of calligraphy based on a famous calligrapher of the Tang Dynasty. Yan Zhenqing (Gan Shinkei in Japanese) was a governor during  the Tang Dynasty. Apparently he was pretty wild at the time. His style had really thick vertical lines with thin horizontals. What I wrote here is not an exact copy of the style, but apparently people in the know would recognize the influence. Anyway, I really like it.

The following is the first four characters of a famous quote from Li Ren which means, “When we see men of worth, we should think of equaling them; when we see men of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves.”