LOL you’re the best
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Trying my hand at ペン字. These are most of the level 1 kanji from WK, minus 一, 二, 三.
The vertical “harai” (where you make a tapered line by lifting the pen off the paper) at the bottom of 十 is surprisingly hard to do without wavering. A “tome” (where you stop fully) on a vertical line is much easier. Any vertical lines reveal your mistakes quickly though, it seems. The upper parts of my 大 are also like a millimeter or two too long. Lots of room for improvement across the board though, particularly in consistency.
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What kind of pen are you using?
It’s not in front of me, but it’s a cheap convenience store ballpoint pen.
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I’m impressed. What are you using as a guide to technique?
Mostly kanji-note.jp for the kanji forms.
But I’ve watched many videos on general techniques.
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Right. After I trained myself using 漢字練習ノート 小学1年生, I can see your point. Let me try mine a sec and take its photo. As far as I remember I trained myself writing “dai” last week. Will my “dai” get better? Idk. The first stroke should be a little bit above the horizontal middle line. *After I took my “dai” writing photo, meh, my “dai” legs shouldn’t be that low, should they? 
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As I noted above, I’m using this site, which has the horizontal line just barely above the midline, so it naturally has a bit of a longer “neck.” I’m guessing that book isn’t specifically for ペン字.
http://kanji-note.jp/kanji_single/?kjcd=5927
There’s a lot of leniency in forms it seems.
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Just watched it! Nice video! Thanks! Can you recommend me a book specifically for penji?
Sorry for the late reply. I have a set at home. I’ll get the name later.
I bought a calligraphy set… Does that count as handwriting?
It feels really nice to use the real brush and ink.
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I’m only level 3 on WaniKani and 2 chapters into Genki 1. My handwriting could use some improvement. I also I haven’t studied strokes or stroke orders yet.
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Never mind, it’s okay, don’t feel bad. I can wait.
It must feel good to let go high tech (gadgets, mobile) from our hands temporarily and really dive into Kanji calligraphy.
The set I have, which was given to me, is called 実用ボールペン字講座, which is kind of just a generic thing. Like a box of cereal that says “Cereal” on it.
I don’t know where that specific one would be on sale, but if you search for that, lots of products in the same category will come up.
I gave 志 another whirl today. I watched some more videos on proper technique.
Yesterday’s is on the right.
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Learning new kanji again (yay!) for the first time in a few months, since I stopped leveling up while preparing for the JLPT
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Since I finally started writing i can now share some pics, too 
So tell me, what you think. I‘m just beginning
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Regarding some of the writing, some of you might want to try writing on handwriting overlays (like KanjiStudy on Android). Because I saw a bit of proportional problems (mostly kanji) or skewed characters (mostly hiragana) in some of what was written. My strict Japanese 4 teacher would have marked them with a note at the very least (sometimes she would mark them wrong). She used to get on people about the size of 日 in 時 and 曜 a lot.
If you’re interested in writing kanji better in general, you should check out this video (warning: in Japanese).
The guy in it gives a really good overview of proportionality and the shapes of kanji. I got a lot better after watching this to be completely honest. I’m much more careful now to keep everything a certain way. I’m still not great by any means, but I’ve only gotten 1 comment about a disproportionate kanji afterwards. So I do feel that I’ve gotten better.
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Yeah balance is my biggest problem with writing kanji! Thanks, I’ll check out the link
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my balance sucks, too. gonna check out your video when i’m home 
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Not what I was expecting, but interesting, nonetheless! Now I just need to figure out the ideal shapes of the kanji and kana
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