Post by Saionji Shonagon on Jul 21, 2010 22:07:34 GMT -5
You may remember I posted this last year:
tousando.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=research&action=display&thread=3131
I've been slogging my way through Thomas LaMarre's Uncovering Heian Japan this week, a book that discusses poetry and calligraphy as practiced in the Heian period. One thing led to another and I mentioned to Richard that I would like to learn how to write my Japanese name. He asked me to remind him which kanji were involved, then whipped up a cheat sheet showing the stroke order for each, assuring me I could practice with a pencil and note pad to get comfortable with it beforemaking an unholy mess attempting to try brush and ink.
All well and good and I have made a number of passes on the kanji for "Sai" over the past couple of days with a Sharpie, but as always, I'm skill level 0, ambition level 10. Reason dueled with ambition and reminded me I will probably waste quite a lot of paper in this endeavor as it is. Then I remembered something Richard had put out on the table at his open studio....
My Buddha Board arrived in the mail this afternoon. The package contained a brush, a square box that serves as both a water container and easel (for gaijin who want to paint that way, I guess) and the board itself. It's been described as a "Zen Etch-A-Sketch". The wet brush marks the board, then the marks evaporate slowly.
Here you can see the mess I've made of 西. The leftmost one has started to evaporate.
I'll have to report further on how it goes, but I acquired one hellacious blister at taiko last night and holding a brush (or a pen) has been an exercise in adaptation today.
www.buddhaboard.com/bbmain__content.html
They retail for about $30 at this size, though there's a mini version that's about $10. Not exactly cheap, and I suspect water and board are not going to act quite the same as ink and paper when the time comes, but we'll see how it goes.
tousando.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=research&action=display&thread=3131
I've been slogging my way through Thomas LaMarre's Uncovering Heian Japan this week, a book that discusses poetry and calligraphy as practiced in the Heian period. One thing led to another and I mentioned to Richard that I would like to learn how to write my Japanese name. He asked me to remind him which kanji were involved, then whipped up a cheat sheet showing the stroke order for each, assuring me I could practice with a pencil and note pad to get comfortable with it before
All well and good and I have made a number of passes on the kanji for "Sai" over the past couple of days with a Sharpie, but as always, I'm skill level 0, ambition level 10. Reason dueled with ambition and reminded me I will probably waste quite a lot of paper in this endeavor as it is. Then I remembered something Richard had put out on the table at his open studio....
My Buddha Board arrived in the mail this afternoon. The package contained a brush, a square box that serves as both a water container and easel (for gaijin who want to paint that way, I guess) and the board itself. It's been described as a "Zen Etch-A-Sketch". The wet brush marks the board, then the marks evaporate slowly.
Here you can see the mess I've made of 西. The leftmost one has started to evaporate. I'll have to report further on how it goes, but I acquired one hellacious blister at taiko last night and holding a brush (or a pen) has been an exercise in adaptation today.
www.buddhaboard.com/bbmain__content.html
They retail for about $30 at this size, though there's a mini version that's about $10. Not exactly cheap, and I suspect water and board are not going to act quite the same as ink and paper when the time comes, but we'll see how it goes.