Fun 書道 class

I’ve been taking a fun Japanese calligraphy course, and is being taught by 前田先生, who seems to be a pretty accomplished calligrapher.

We just finished our second week, and with the advent of spring, were doing characters for flowering fruit trees, 梅、桃、桜. I also did maple, and am actually really happy with this somewhat stylized windswept 楓.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/xwp9fUgDryJsjcAd7

The class has been way more fun than I expected. The 先生 is really good-humoured and really fun to learn from.

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I also have a windy 桜

https://photos.app.goo.gl/Zv69mKM3hvnqDuncA

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And a undersized and less stylized 梅

https://photos.app.goo.gl/T9i656Rn7DNxz7hP9

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These look really cool! Meanwhile I still struggle with balance on my kaisho characters…

How long have you been practicing calligraphy?

Also, how did your 桃 come out?

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@chezmax
Looks like a great way to let creativity flow, I specially like the 楓 character.

I’ve been doing a crash course for almost 2 months now; no such creative moments are happening in the classroom yet :sweat_smile: … managing to get the basics right seems like a real challenge already.

Anyway, yesterday I went to the big Kinokuniya store in Osaka (Umeda) and spent almost an hour turning pages in the Shodo section. Such nice resources there :star_struck: (the recalling of my already overweighted luggage quickly prevented any attemp to purchase :sweat_smile:).

They have a subsection called 書道アート which was a pleasure to find, as I’ve never seen such books explaning how little by little you can twist the characters and imbed them with extra meaning, also some unconventional tool were explained :open_mouth: … It must be great to have those conversations with your sensei.

@Saida I’m totally in that page too… I went with this book as my reference guide during the course, it seemed broad enough, so it has been ok.
If you are specially practicing Kaisho, I would recommend this book. It says in 30 days, but it’s more like 30 lessons. I’m taking this one for sure before getting back.

A good book explaining the basic point and a search on google with the words 手本 or 臨書 will give you tons of material to practice.

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Umm, I practice normal writing on my cell phone using Kanji Study, but, that was my second ninety minute class of doing it with a brush!

My 桃s weren’t good enough to save :wink:

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I did 桃の花 in calligraphy once. I probably have my attempt at home. I will post it tomorrow, if you don’t mind other people’s work in your thread :blush:

Also: only your second time using a brush?! Wow, that is 凄い!

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Please do!

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Yeah, this seems to be much less formal. We’re not really presenting rules per se, but sort of learning as we’re going. She’s slowly introducing principals (like, watch those midlines, this is a stop, this is a release, you kind of want a 45 degree entrance), and my first dozen attempts are usually awfully balanced. The regular script ones (eg, my 梅) is being done by looking at her model and trying to emulate it. As we learn more principals it starts getting a little easier to make it better.

You wouldn’t believe how many lopsided 木 components I had, and I can never quite get the proportions of the 女 to look right to me. (Well, maybe you would believe).

When she started introducing a little bit more artistic-cursive with slightly less … rigid? rules, it’s somewhat freeing? Of course, I threw out lots without much artistic merit at all. :slight_smile:

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Oh, nice.
I took a calligraphy class when I was in Kyoto in 2009 as a part of a foreign exchange program with their university of foreign studies. Got a fairly good grade for it too.
Loads of fun. I think I still have my final project somewhere. Not sure what kanji I did though… Can’t remember. I should look it up sometime.

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I read this as a positive at first…
Same with me though. Always trying to figure out how to get it balanced. It all depends on your first stroke, too. Especially when you need to fit several characters on one page, and the balance also affects the other characters.

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