Last sunday the Osaka sister city network hosted a calligraphy class in Osaka International House.
It costs me 1000 en for a 2.5 hours lesson. It also included some calligraphy papers, and a basic calligraphy book written by the same teacher who taught us that day, Keisho Fukumitsu.

Below is the list materials used during the class.

a. brush - fude 筆

b. ink stone - suzuri 硯

c. mat - shitajiki 下敷き

d. practice model - tehon　手本

e. brush rest - fudeoki 筆置き

f. ink stick - sumi 墨

g. hanshi paper - hanshi 半紙

h. paperweight - bunchin 文鎮

i. water jug - water jug 水滴

the ink and brushes. We have to mix are own ink.

for about 2 hours, we practiced with different types of strokes. This are my practice sheet for horizontal strokes.

this is my table, where everybody is seriously practicing and having lots of fun.

at about 3:30 pm we have to write our own masterpiece on 2 boards that were provided. We have to select a single character and practice for it about 2o-30minutes then wrote it on the board. The sensei and the artist ( me ) have to decide which was done best and have it stamp with different saying, i choose “follow your destiny” or Rakuten Chiemi( I think ).

here we are with our masterpieces.

The sensei is teaching at Nara University and she brought with her some of her student to assist the participants. This is one of the student-assistant and she is from Russia.

It was really a whole new experience. Writing kanji with a pen or pencil is really different with using a real brush.

Notes:

1. Brushes are usually made from sheep or horse hair ( big ones ), and the weasel for smaller ones.

2. The ink stick is made from soot mix with jello for it to harden.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 13th, 2007 at 12:51 pm and is filed under Fun Stuff, Hobbies, Life In Japan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.