What is the meaning of the color red in various cultures? What comes to your mind first? Red as celebratory in China, red for a 60th birthday in Japan and your second childhood, a red light meaning stop immediately or the dreaded X in red in Western cultures meaning incorrect on schoolwork? You must be thinking, now what does all this have to do with Japanese calligraphy? In my view, a great deal. It turns out that teacher corrections to calligraphy are made using red ink though in truth the … [Read more...]
How to Design the Perfect Calligraphy Tattoo?
Most people get ink (tattooed) to identify a specific time or event in their life or a significant aspect of themselves. This can be a simple symbol, words, or a detailed design based on something with meaning. For an English speaker, tattooing using English words isn’t that interesting or creative, so people look for different ways of writing the same word in other languages in the hope of finding something interesting. This is one reason you see many people with Kanji / Hanzi Tattoos. That is … [Read more...]
What do Calligraphy, Handmade Paper and Rejection have in Common?
All artists need to become skilled in accepting the many ways of rejection, from form letters to “we had so many high quality applicants, unfortunately you were not selected etc.” Some offer encouragement which is appreciated. Whatever the reason for not being accepted into an exhibition or a gallery or when there is a likely sale that doesn’t pan out, we should expect that to be the norm but never stop trying to reach as high as possible. Handpapermaking.org is a non-profit organization … [Read more...]
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