I use anything that I see near me at that time.
Sometimes my finger on the table, sometimes a nearby pen with a nearby paper. That paper often turns out to be a tax-paper that wasn't posted yet. And sometimes I just grab someone walking by and use his or her hand-palm to write on, it's not too rough, and not too soft, just perfect I would say.

-Mesqueeb

Inspired by this thread I used a brush pen today. They are really hard to fit in the little squares on this kanji worksheet, but every once in a while I randomly come out with this breathtakingly beautiful little thing. It's added a whole new "fun" to the process!

Just went out and bought a moleskin notebook with squared pages for practicing kanji. Normally I wouldn't buy such an excessively priced bundle of paper, but I couldn't find any other notebooks with square paper and I happened to have some gift vouchers for a bookstore. That and moleskins feel so damn good :-)

well so i found some so called "brush markers" i cant beleive i spent 6$ on them.. and i cant believe that they can get away with calling them brush markers.. they are just markers with funny shaped tips.. and the tips are inflexable and they bleed through the paper badly.. i wish i could get my money back but once they are opened they are no longer returnable.. oh well i suppose ill find a use for them

so i went out to get some finer pens.. my 1mm uniballs just dont cut it.. so i got some .5mm ones and some .38mm which is the finest ones ive ever seen.. i can even write some of the kanji inside the tiny squares in my gridpaper.. so with them my kanji can be super tiny if i want them to be.. and i dont have to worry about the lines running together when i write them in a notebook like with my bold uniball pens..

ahhh i set myself up a japanese study area in my room especially for studying the writing system.. ive been using my brush pens (the good ones with the bristle brush tips not the stupid felt tip ones) to make myself a kanji poster.. its all color coded for which kanji goes with which lesson..

i love using brush pens not only because of the beauty of the kanji written with them but also because ive noticed that after practicing with them my fine motor skills have gotten better all around..

My index finger, mostly.

i did a Google search on "kanji paper" and found some great examples of kanji practice paper. Imported them into SBpro and I've been practicing writing them in the boxes. Each box is subdivided into four boxes, it has really been helping me with proportions.

Such paper has been linked numerous times. The site should really get a wiki-based faq one of these days.

I use a stylus on my knee or my desk.

kanjiwarrior Wrote:WACOM tablet with Sketch Book Pro 2.0 and I use the Chisel Tip Pen setting. I import a paper texture just so I'm not staring at a white screen. Anki on one side of my monitor and Sketch Book on the other. Took a 50 or so Kanji to get used to writing with the tablet, I usually use it to draw and do digital paintings, I figured this was the cheapest solution since the alternative was going to waste a lot of paper. Anytime I had to write on actual paper, just a regular #2 (hb) pencil on a post-it note, or a ball point pen.

This is a pretty great idea. I had been using a graph paper notebook or scrap paper and a Pentel needle-tip pen. I'm a big fan of the Pentel needle-tip retractable fine-point.

However, after reading this, I downloaded the Sketchbook Pro demo, and it's pretty awesome for reviewing. I imported a graph paper background and use a ballpoint pen setting. And in my right screen I have Anki set up to display the kanji in 5 different fonts, including the stroke order font - so I make sure I'm doing the correct stroke order.

I started out with a 0.5mm gel pen, but the line was still too thick for my taste when drawing on 10mm boxes. Now I use a 0.1mm pigment liner and it's perfect for getting all the small details in.

A Nintendo DS and 「なぞっておぼえる大人の漢字練習　完全版」. I can't say it does much good for my handwriting (but that's abysmal in any language), but I use it to check stroke order if I'm unsure without having to search the web for it.

I use a .5 mm mechanical pencil. The difference between one and a regular pencil is just huge for me when writing kanji. I wish I had started using them much earlier. I still suck at using a pen though. =(

I haven't used a regular pencil since I was in elementary school o_O
Having to constantly sharpen them, and the constantly changing tip size/texture is just too annoying.

squiggyflop Wrote:well so i found some so called "brush markers" i cant beleive i spent 6$ on them.. and i cant believe that they can get away with calling them brush markers.. they are just markers with funny shaped tips.. and the tips are inflexable and they bleed through the paper badly..

That's hardly the markers' fault. It happens when one uses poor quality paper.

Actually what I really use is a Sheaffer Cadet F1 nib.

onafarm Wrote:

squiggyflop Wrote:well so i found some so called "brush markers" i cant beleive i spent 6$ on them.. and i cant believe that they can get away with calling them brush markers.. they are just markers with funny shaped tips.. and the tips are inflexable and they bleed through the paper badly..

That's hardly the markers' fault. It happens when one uses poor quality paper.

ooh ok.. yeah i was trying to use it on index cards.. they were the thick kind but also very cheap.. i looked up the markers.. they are supposed to be high flow.. apparently they are mainly sold as rubber stamping accessories.. it didnt say it on the package but it was supposed to be in the rubber stamping section of the store not the fine arts section.. a simple case of a new stock boy who didnt yet know where to put things.. that is also why the tips were inflexable.. im hoping to get some new ones when i get the money.. and this time ill ask a worker there if it was placed in the proper section.. its no big deal.. they were just the wrong markers for the job.. i guess brush markers for rubber stamping are just different.. oh well.. so it was partially the markers fault.. but the real reason was that they were doing exactly what they were designed to do.. they are stiff and high flow the way you would want a rubber stamping marker to be..

now that i think of it i want to make some rubber stamps out of erasers.. oooo i could do my name in katakana,, *idea engine kicks into gear*

jmkeralis Wrote:If you're just looking to practice, though, I'd recommend a small dry-erase board...I used one for my biochemistry classes (to practice mechanisms), and it really helped not only because you can see what you're doing (as opposed to the palm-tracing method), but you actually commit the stroke order and arrangement to muscle memory. Just a thought.

I original tired that, but after a while there was dry erase dust all over my desk. It got quite messy. The eraser that my markers came with went bad pretty fast too, and I was having to resort to using tissues and napkins, and once they soak up a lot of ink they don't work as well either. I'm happy with the electronic method right now, no mess and it's right on the screen with Anki so I don't have to keep looking back up at the monitor.

i use a uniball signo which i've permanently borrowed from my sister. i also printed some 1x1cm squared paper but i find it really difficult to fit certain kanji into the squares.

ballpoint pen and a maths book. Perfectly legible but it looks like a childs handwriting... which is kind of incorrect seeing as japanese children can't write kanji... well at least not 2042. Still, perfectly readable. Oh, or my DS. That's awesome.

原稿用紙 (what they use to help kids make their writing size proportionate in elementary) and black uniball pen micro (it's very thin, so my kanji don't look mushy).

I also put more blank paper below the 原稿用紙, it makes writing much more smoother and quicker.

I just use blank A4 paper. I used to use some cheap kind of ballpen which writes really smooth, bought a whole bunch of em. I used it all the time to write kanji and got too used to it. But then if I had to write kanji with a pencil it looked crappy. So now I switched over to a pencil (albeit a mechanical one, hate sharpening). I guess it shouldn't matter with what you write, it has to come out the same with either pencil, ballpen, gelpen or needle tip pen. I think it's good to switch from time to time so you don't get too attached to a certain pen(cil).

I found the Pentech Liquaphite pens can be useful. They're like a cross between a ball point pen and a pencil. They write like a ball point, but the writing looks like pencil and you can erase it. Compared to normal mechanical pencils, there's no lead to break and has consistent shape.