Have you ever received a request from someone asking to use your work online? For most of us the answer would be yes. If not, if you keep creating good work, someone will ask you. What would be your response? As we all know, it’s a great feeling when someone asks to use your work in their project, be it a book, online advertising, a website, social media sites, etc. Many artists are just so happy for their work to be shown that they say “YES”, you can use it. They believe that it will help … [Read more...]
Logic Behind The Magic – Brush Techniques, Part II (a)
In Part I of this series I have written about arm positioning principles (腕法, わんほう, wanhō, i.e., the way the arm is utilized while holding a brush). I also wrote that they are often confused with brush holding principles (執筆法, しっぴつほう, shippitsu hō, i.e., the position of fingers on the brush axis). In this article I will focus on the latter in connection with the former. Calligraphers use various kinds and sizes of brushes, and each of them serves a certain purpose. Although this article will … [Read more...]
The Sun of Vast Skies – a calligraphy seal. Part I
Look up on a beautiful summer day and you will see the vast nothingness of blue skies, scattered clouds strolling lazily carried by a calm wind, and a blazing dot - the Sun, without which we would wander in darkness. The philosophy of the ancient art of East Asian calligraphy is inseparable from nature and its forces. If you think of paper as the void or the sky (空, くう, kū), hovering above our heads like an infinite canvas, then Chinese characters (漢字, かんじ, kanji, lit ”characters of Han … [Read more...]