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Soulend
13th June 2002, 12:17
Hi all. I have just started practicing Shodo, and jeez, it is way more difficult than I imagined to brush the characters correctly. I need a LOT of practice ;) Does anyone else here practice calligraphy?
Did it take you a long time to produce good copy?

fifthchamber
14th June 2002, 14:46
Hi David,
Yeah...I have done it and enjoyed it also...Recently I have been a bit remiss with pracise but I still appreciate other peoples works..
The best way that I found to start with Shodo was to get your hands on a 'copybook' (I found mine in Chinatown, London but they should be easy to get.) The book is essentially a 'painting by numbers' setup and it teaches you very simply the correct order of strokes and roughly what the strokes should look like in 'official' script...The books usually contain a few hundred Kanji to start with but can be found with more or less in them. Once the books have been worked through and 'understood' (As best as..) you start on the same copying but without the guidelines behind the brush..This really brings out the flaws in your work..Sometimes quite painfully!
After that I guess it takes years and years of work and you still end up a laughing stock next to someone like Tesshu..His script (both correct forms and spirited forms) are incredible and only after I tried to do it did I realise exactly what kind of precision was needed to end up with the results that he did....Penmanship? Jeez...Blows me out of the water! (No pun intended!:o )
I would love to find a class that taught it but England doesn't really announce the projects it has going on like that so until it does, I guess its just me and a brush....
Take care..

Ginzu Girl
14th June 2002, 16:11
;) The two challenges for me are getting:
1) the correct horizontal:vertical ratio
2) vertical lines to slant properly

Something about English makes most letters slant slightly to the right. And of course, the vertical strokes in shodo must slant (slightly) to the left. (Or did I get mixed up? Anyway, it's the opposite!)

The other tricky bit is that the wrist is kept still. The forearm is used to move the brush, which stays vertical. In English, we rest our elbow on the writing surface and flex the wrist and fingers. The pen rests on our hand, near the knuckle of the index finger. I never noticed how shaky my handwriting was until I lifted my elbow from the table!

To avoid bad habits, it's considered best to get live instruction. (Just like in everything else!) That being said, my last real lesson was over 25 years ago, when I was a wee bairn.

Having high quality paper and brushes helps tremendously. There are lots of cheap "japanese" brushes out there but most of them are quite soft--more suitable for art and watercolor painting. Calligraphy brushes are a bit stiffer and distribute ink a little more evenly. Another "cheat" is to use paper that has been sized--treated with a coating to make the surface absorb ink more evenly. Also, I would highly recommend those grids (a 2:3 rectangle divided into four quadrants) to help you eyeball the proportions of your radicals.

I can easily spot the "non-native" flaws in my brush writing. I expect most readers can see them too. When I write with pen or pencil, it's easier to "fool" people.

So, David-san, are you diligently working on the eight-stroke character for eternity?

Ben, have you checked with any local Buddhist temples in your town? Many of them offer weekend classes or workshops on various Japanese cultural arts. Or, you might find a priest willing to give you private lessons.

My $0.02 worth!
Ja, minna san tanoshin de kudasai! :smilejapa

Soulend
14th June 2002, 16:11
Hi Ben. I have been using "SHO: Japanese Calligraphy", by Christopher Earnshaw, which includes a large 'copybook' section with full instructions and stroke order for each character (as well as a whole lot more!) An excellent book. Of course to read how it's done and to execute are two different things.

I practiced for quite a few hours last night, and once in awhile I could write a halfway decent character, so perhaps there's hope for me. The brushes in my writing set are quite small, too, so this may be part of the problem. I plan on getting proper chu-fude very soon, so hopefully this will help.

My main problems are with shaping the ends of the strokes correctly and learning when to apply and release pressure properly. I guess with practice...

I too, wish there was a teacher or seminar available. But, as I live in the armpit of the earth there isn't any such luck.

Even if I never get too good, at least I now have a much greater appreciation of the artists who can produce these works, and through my reading at least know a little about it. I may be babbling on with the passion of the recently converted here, but I cannot stop being amazed at how simple it looks like it would be, yet when you take up a brush it is harder than hell..at least for me :)

Oh well, glad I have three large sumi sticks....

Edit:
Hehe..Hi Anita, I guess you and I posted at nearly the same time. Yep, I don't know how many Eiji Happo (and ni, shita, roku....)I've written, but last night I could close my eyes and there it was, complete with numbers and arrows showing stroke order and direction. If only the character I write would look as good as the one I visualize.

I also came to the stark realization that I am shaky without the forearm/elbow support..

Guess I have another inksplattered weekend ahead...

Ginzu Girl
14th June 2002, 16:35
Another book I'd highly recommend is Dave Lowry's "The Sword and the Brush." He gives a great comparison of brush strokes and sword strokes and then offers a selection of characters that focus on martial arts terms. For each character he provides an etymological and contextual explanation. One note of caution, his examples of calligraphy (brushed by him) are very advanced--a running-grass style (I think?). We novices should stick with the more standard semi-block style.

Another recommendation would be to pick up a book or two on etymology. It's great fun finding out how radicals get combined into a word or concept. The Hawley library (http://www.wmhawley.com/china1.html) has some inexpensive charts that are pretty handy.

To me, shodo is intimately Japanese. You'll certainly get some insights on traditional thought. I agree, it's a lot of fun.

P.S. You know not to try putting that little plastic cap back on the brush after you've softened it, yes?:D

P.P.S. Gotta get back to work.

Rennis
14th June 2002, 16:40
I try and do some shuji (?KŽš?Acalligraphy, what just about ever Japanese person I have ever met calls what we call shodo) whenever I can to help improve my general writing, but I haven't been keeping up at it as much as I should lately. My roommate right now is a 9dan in this crazy brush writing stuff (seeing as he is only in his twenties, they obviously move through the ranks faster than us budo types) so I keep meaning to practice with him some, but life somehow seems to keep preventing it. I've found that using fude-pen for your general everyday writing alone will help alot though.

Slightly off topic, but the sensei who taught the class I took in college was amazing. He could actually switch hands and still write extremely well (there were a couple of lefties in the class so he had to show them how they have to control the brush differently from right handed people) and more than a couple times he would walk up to the desk the student was sitting at and write the character correctly, showing them everything they were doing wrong, doing so while he was writing it upside down, and occassionally off handed. On the second day of class he did that to a lefthanded friend of mine, who processed to turn to me with jaw on the floor saying "Did you just see that?". Not surprisingly I later found out he is fairly famous throughout the shodo scene in Japan. Needless to say I kept all his the copy sheets he wrote for me as well as many of the corrections he made on my poor attempts.

Best regards.

Rennis Buchner

Ginzu Girl
14th June 2002, 16:59
My apologies Ben, I forgot to add your title in my last post! I didn't mean to imply that David deserved courtesy and you didn't.

I tried to edit my post but time had expired.
Shitsurei shimashita.
:o

Soulend
14th June 2002, 18:31
Hi again Anita:

Yes, I have owned, read, and re-read Sword and Brush for quite a while. That book was what inspired me to give shodo a try myself. Believe me, I don't have the skill to even think about trying sosho (grass style)script yet :) I'll definately pick up some of Hawley's charts too..Bugei Trading has a large selection of them. Plastic tip..hmm..my fude don't have them...

Rennis..sounds like your sensei was incredible! I guess if I become discouraged I can always imagine how worse it would be if I was left-handed! From what I can gather(and please correct me if I'm wrong!), Shuji equates more to 'handwriting' and Sho to the more artistic 'calligraphy'. I have seen shuji described as the first stage of learning shodo, as on this page. (http://www.panix.com/~mmkoto/kampo/foutre.html) What I'm writing could not properly be called sho. Actually it isn't even shuji - "horribly deformed stick figures" would be closer to the truth :)

Don Cunningham
14th June 2002, 18:46
While I like the book, Sword and Brush, I don't think it works well for shodo practice or instruction. The traditional Japanese calligraphy workbooks are much better. They also tend to progress from basic strokes to more complicated strokes for the characters.

One side benefit of shodo practice has been the ability to rapidly calculate stroke counts and recognize radicals, both critical elements when searching for unknown or unrecognized kanji in various kanji dictionaries. All of mine are organized in some manner on radicals and stroke counts. You also quickly learn the proper stroke sequence after a bit of practice. (Certain strokes must be done before others.)

My main problem has been balancing the size and location of characters. My skills are also inconsistent. Nothing worse than completing two or three good characters, only to blow it with the last one in a sequence. I've found my computer scanner to be an excellent means to compensate for this, though, when trying to group several kanji into a publication. After completing one character at a time, I then scan them into the computer. I am able to build the entire sequence, enlarging or reducing individual characters as required to balance the size and positions.

After several of these, I noticed I had a fairly extensive library of kanji characters. Using a graphics program, I was able to break them down into components and even build new kanji characters as required. Of course, this is not very artistic, but it is how I did all the kanji to illustrate my own book. In this case, I was more interested in the historical implications, rather than being artistic, but I also wanted it to look professional.

Chuck Clark
14th June 2002, 20:55
My sensei (who lives in Fussa-shi) fussed at me that I used paper that was too expensive for practice.

I told her that every once and awhile I did something that was not as bad as most of my work and I might want to "keep it". Needless to say, she laughed and then proceeded to always mark my "keepers" with a big orange "A+" in the corner so that I would have to see that as well if I wanted to frame it for posterity.

I do not practice nearly as much as I should now, but I miss my lessons with Inoue-sensei a lot. She always said that serious budo students must practice the brush. It is the same thing.

Semper Fi, Gunny.

Regards (to the rest of you...),

fifthchamber
15th June 2002, 12:35
Hi Anita.
Thanks for the message. It was good of you to put that up on the posts...I appreciate it thanks.
I still have not quite managed to keep my arms off the damn page for the time it takes me to write anything more than 'Ichi' sadly..And even that is more difficult than it should be! I can perform 30 Seoi nage in a row on either side but can't control one light brush an inch above a page...Pathetic I thinks the word for it..Just slightly less pathetic than I was when I started doing Seoi Nage!
RENSHU, RENSHU, and more RENSHU for me then..
Abayo