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I don't like to dwell on the past, and was about to delete photos... but then I figured I should probably share those here before doing so.

Sorry for the bad photos. This is one of those few pieces that were sent to Japan by our teacher for evaluation. I think this got "silver" rating or something

At the bottom left you can see it was signed with kanji that have readings "fa" "bu" "ri" "su". Those characters were chosen by a visiting calligraphy student from Japan, Erika whom I ended up exchanging letters for about a year and then stayed with her family in Japan back in 2007. I think her family felt two weeks was a bit long so I stayed with them for about a week, and was also kindly hosted by three of the old timers on the forum.

(I never quite got the hang of signing my name with a smaller brush, it was surprisingly hard to do without inki spilling!)




A few more shots:

http://fuaburisu.minus.com/i/Zsbu6i2raVK6



This is the class in Brussels where I used to take this course, and also my then teacher Kyoko Machida Sensei :

http://www.flickr.com/photos/seikinsou/s...758319335/

zenga-style drawings of chinese lantern and kokeshi are really good. were they done by teachers or students?

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According to the comments it was done by a student. I have no idea really I've never seen people use colour during my classes.

Looks great.
I'm far from writing like that. Actually, all my Kanji are a mess.
Maybe I should take a calligraphy course.

Really impressive calligraphy, Fabrice. Thanks for sharing. If you don't mind telling, may I ask about how much total practice you had when you made the work in the image above?

Even though I often write letters in Japanese, my handwriting is atrocious. So I'm wondering how much calligraphy training I'd need to become decent at pen-ji or the fude-pen. If I can make significant progress in an hour or two a week, I'd consider taking classes or teaching myself through videos and books. Otherwise, I'll just wait till I'm less busy.

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Thanks. I think the class was 1h30 on average and I went once a week for about a year? That was a while ago. You do calligraphy pretty much from day one though, and you get all the basics in the first months, by going through the single stroke ("one"), two strokes (they're not bent the same way), three, then conveniently "four" has the veritcal strokes.. eventually you get to practice "eternity" a lot because it has the hook, it has the stroke that starts wide and tapers out, and another one that is the opposite... so basically when you get there you have all the basics down.

The rest I think is mostly an artform and a profession it seems in Japan since from what I understood it is a kind of education like art school here. So beyond the basics it's learning how to write in all the different styles and all the obscure characters and all the traditional poems and such.

Another thing to consider is there were often a couple Japanese teenagers there whom were practicing also writing with pencils, so they were indeed practicing their hand writing, which the non-Japanese were never required to do. So if you find a class maybe you can ask specifically to practice the hand writing and the brush basics?

You will have a big advantage knowing the kanji as you don't have to memorize the stroke orders.

Thanks for the informative reply, Fabrice. I also have a few more questions, if you don't mind.

1. What forms of script were you able to learn in the year you took classes? Kaisho (楷書), gyousho (行書), and/or sousho (草書)? Judging by the photo, it looks like you learned kaisho and gyousho. However, I'm not really confident in my ability to discern between them, so I'll await your reply.

2. What sort of qualifications does a good calligraphy instructor have?

Sorry to be so inquisitive, but I hope you have time to respond.

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1. I think I got to do a bit of the three of them but the gyousho and sousho were a very small part of the exercises. I must have been doing the standard characters for at least 6 months.

2. In the case of my teacher I'm sure she did this pretty much all her life just because there was no hesitation at all she always gave demonstration and drew like 5 - 6 characters in one go without ever spilling ink or missing anything. To be honest I have no ideas what the qualifications are. She was teaching the Kampo Harada course. I don't know if you get certifications for that. I remember my then girlfriend she was 24 or so and said she would need to learn many more years before teaching. It sounded like she was doing this the way I did art school, meaning as part of standard education.

Just that personally I was happy to have a Japanese calligraphy teacher. Even if it is very formal since I was into RTK it seemed like such a better option that the few other available options in Brussels back then. The only other semi formal option I remember was joining a Chinese calligraphy course which might have been just as good

But yeah that's a lot of vague sorry =) Maybe someone in Japan can give you more factual information?

edit: In this earlier thread from 2006 I posted a scan of the textbooks I received. They were small booklets, 20 pages or so, and I received one like every two weeks. In fact I never got to practice more than a few pages of each. Possible that I was supposed to do more of these at home On this thread picture that is the style I don't remember ever doing (it doesn't have the orange grid for practice either).

Nice hand! I wish my brushwork looked that nice! I am uncoordinated, and I was nowhere nearly that good after a year.

Thanks for the helpful reply, Fabrice. I found someone who seems to be an extremely well-qualified calligraphy teacher near Boston. Unfortunately, her Boston classes take place during one of my philosophy classes, so calligraphy will have to wait until summertime. Anyway, her website seems down right now, but I'll leave the link here in case anyone wants to take a look later.