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Post by Kôriki Ryuushirô Hiroshige on Jul 24, 2010 18:09:51 GMT -5
Ok
I'm looking to start learning about Japanese Calligraphy, I would ask those more accomplished than I.
What tools do I need to get started?
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Saionji Shonagon
New Member
One dreamed of becoming somebody. Another remained awake and became. (Found in a fortune cookie.)
Posts: 7,240
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Post by Saionji Shonagon on Jul 25, 2010 8:09:59 GMT -5
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Post by solveig on Jul 25, 2010 11:29:09 GMT -5
Noble Cousin!
Greetings from Solveig! I got a copy of that book a while back. As I recall, it is pretty good. Ultimately, you will probably want to get a calligraphy dictionary which of necessity would be in Japanese. However, that presumes that you are really going to get into calligraphy. The Buddha Board brush is rather more like doing real calligraphy than a sharpie is. If all you want to do is practice characters with the sharpie, then save yourself some money and just use a pencil or a pilot V5 on regular tablets of paper. You can of course decide to use the sharpie to make huge signs. This involves drawing outlines for the individual characters and then filling them in.
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Post by solveig on Jul 25, 2010 11:51:23 GMT -5
Noble Cousin! Greetings from Solveig! I'm looking to start learning about Japanese Calligraphy ... What tools do I need to get started? Are you going to Pennsic? If so, I will be "teaching" a calligraphy class which if I recall correctly is Tuesday afternoon. A Buddha board is an ingenious way to practice, but is also completely ephemeral. The lines start to fade rather rapidly which makes it impossible to properly practice writing Zen Buddhist phrases. Among other things, Japanese calligraphy should be produced somewhat slowly and deliberately. Eventually, you will want to produce actual ink on actual paper. While there are lots of extra things to get if you want to get into things, here is the absolute minimum: 1. A "shitajiki" which is just a piece of felt a little bit bigger than the paper you will be writing on. 2. A paper weight which is flat on one side. 3. A calligraphy brush. Prefereably a #3 if I recall correctly. Regardless, the brush should be about a foot or so long and should have rather substantial diameter. Say about a centimeter. 4. Something at least a couple of inches wide and somewhat shallow (e.g., an ashtray) to put ink in. 5. You may want to get a "tsudare" which is just a bamboo mat to roll up your brush in while it is being stored. For expendables, you will need: hanshi (a particular size of Japanese calligraphy paper) bokuju (liquid ink) A. Yes, you can grind your own ink from ink sticks using an ink stone which eliminates a need for the ink container. However, my teacher was rather opposed to us grinding our own ink. Grinding your own ink does make things rather more difficult. B. Most paper sold as Japanese calligraphy paper in North America is pretty bad. There are some places where you can get better calligraphy paper. Unfortunately, this art paper may be too expensive for practice purposes. C. Anyway, Japanese calligraphy paper has two sides which is relatively rough and the other relatively smooth. Normally, you write on the smooth side. But, if the smooth side is slick or waxy, you need to write on the rough side. D. My calligraphy teacher was rather fussy about the bokuju we used. He said to get bokuju (liquid ink) which says "sakuinyou" (in Kanji of course) on the side of the box the ink bottle came in. As I recall, they sell fairly decent bokuju at Japan Paper in Montreal. |
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Post by Yamanouchi Eidou on Jul 25, 2010 15:51:37 GMT -5
My shodo professor had us practice on old newspapers. More than the materials, he was concerned with technique.
He gave us the following instructions:
1.) Practice 15 minutes everyday.
2.) Write large. If you write small you can't really get a feel for what you're trying to do. (And when I say large, I mean 8-10 inch characters using a brush where the handle was about 1/4 inch diameter.
3.) Be aware of the spring and feather of the brush. An even hand is necessary for good shodo.
4.) the first character we wrote was "chi chi" or father because it included the better part of basic strokes we would be learning.
Also, every week he would write us an example piece to go off of for each assignment. He was apparently a master calligrapher and his father was like one of the founding members of the Japan Calligraphy Association.
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Post by solveig on Jul 26, 2010 0:37:50 GMT -5
Noble Cousin! Greetings from Solveig! My shodo professor had us practice on old newspapers. More than the materials, he was concerned with technique. Learning technique is vital, but that is rather difficult to discuss here. My teacher wouldn't let us use such a small brush. We even signed our names using the rather fatter brushes we were using. A 10 inch character will pretty much fill one sheet of hanshi. Elementary school students begin by drawing single characters like that. Later on, five charcter zen sayings are common. The right hand column has three characters and the left hand column has two followed by a signature. We had to draw checkerboards and spirals at the beginning of each lesson. The canonical character which has all of the basic strokes is 永 the EI of "eien" meaning eternity. |
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Post by Kôriki Ryuushirô Hiroshige on Jul 26, 2010 6:55:43 GMT -5
<snip> Are you going to Pennsic? If so, I will be "teaching" a calligraphy class which if I recall correctly is Tuesday afternoon. <snip> Not this year. I'm hoping that my wife will be able to stop by some of the classes and pick up some hand outs for me. My Aikido dojo, will on occasion have a weekend clinic for techinques and will usually have a calligraphy session also. I missed the last one, but I'm hoping to make it to the next one (end of August, I think). I believe the Dojo has calligraphy materials available for sale, will have to stop and check. |
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Saionji Shonagon
New Member
One dreamed of becoming somebody. Another remained awake and became. (Found in a fortune cookie.)
Posts: 7,240
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Post by Saionji Shonagon on Jul 27, 2010 0:02:02 GMT -5
A Buddha board is an ingenious way to practice, but is also completely ephemeral. The lines start to fade rather rapidly which makes it impossible to properly practice writing Zen Buddhist phrases. Written in water Fragments of a name appear And vanish like mist. "Rapid" is a relative concept. If one is practicing a single character on the board (which is about the size of a single sheet of standard copy paper), one has to wait for it to fade before practicing the next. If anything this is conducive to not rushing. Got to have a look at the book I posted the Amazon link to in message #2 of this thread over the weekend. It looks quite useful. The only reason I didn't buy it is that Fujimaki (in town on business and a visit with me) says I can have his old copy. |
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