INK and Calligraphy n Inktober

Inktober is here again ! 

So this months themes will be the beauty of ink in painting and calligraphy. 

My hopefully not too blurry photo is a page from a book showing xing shu calligraphy by Cai Xiang 

The book is Zhou Kexi  The Art of Chinese Calligraphy 2009 

Zi Yong's 1000 Character Classic

 There were originally said to be 800 versions of copies of the 1000 character Classic created by Zi Yong to provide student monks with calligraphy examples. These were distributed across Eastern Zhejiang and surviving copies exist in various collections!

The left hand columns are an older form of caoshu with the kaishu on the right with all the characters showing strokes more similar to xingshu running script. Beautiful and educational! 

Zi Yong was originally a court painter but retired to become a Zen Monk and than an abbot. 

Thanks to the modern Internet those of us who are not Zen monks can also enjoy this. Many thanks to whoever digitized and uploaded this copy for others to study and enjoy!

INK and Calligraphy n Inktober

Inktober is here again ! 

So this months themes will be the beauty of ink in painting and calligraphy. 

My hopefully not too blurry photo is a page from a book showing xing shu calligraphy by Cai Xiang 

The book is Zhou Kexi  The Art of Chinese Calligraphy 2009 

Asian Inktober - Calligraphy Studio print

#asianinktober #inktober #kiyonaga #calligraphy  #japaneseprint

ASIAN INKTOBER 

To finish off Asian Inktober here's a Kiyonaga Print shwing a famous child calligrapher and also showing several calligraphy styles and a good view of an actual studio and its layout and equipment.
Note also the mastery of ink and tonal gradient. I often notice Kiyonaga prints because of his careful use of blacks and grays ranging from solid areas of black to subtle gray patterns contrasting with colors. He tends to limit his colors but note how in this print lighter colors in the background suggest depth and also the use of perspective without shadows!

Qiu Noble

8 wine jars is a sign of respect?

(RE) Introducing Technozi

Just a explanation and reminder of what Technozi is about:

Primarily HANZI the chinese characters used to Write Sinitic dialects and other East Asian languages like Japanese Korean and formerly Vietnamese.

I've blogged on Calligraphy typography fonts unihan dialects and occassionally diverge with posts on  other Asian scripts and Asian culture and history in general.

Will's Quills is closing!

Famous Sydney Shop Will's Quills is Closing!

Even if you don't live in Sydney tell anyone you know who does cos

THERE'S 50 % OFF EVERYTHING IN THE STORE!

European and Asian calligraphy brushes pen paper books!

Paint Ink Paper for crafts. Blank bound Books and albums and fans!

Marker Pens! and More!

The sale continues until May 26 2012

If you're reading this post after the closing date please feel free to add comments about happy memories of finding marvellous things at Will's quills or suggest alternate shopping venues to replace their unique range!

Will's Quills is in Chatswood  166 Victoria Avenue. It's about three blocks beyond  the main shopping area and you can catch a bus there and back if you don't have a car the 273 or 257 !


This store will be missed but sadly the owner is retiring and no one's interested or able to take over the shop!

MUNJADO KOREAN STYLE CHARACTER LOYALTY

This is the character for Loyalty. I'm surprised that there seems to be anything similar to MUNJADO  in the art of any of the East Asian cultures apart from Korea? I know "Proper" artistic calligraphy is ideally black and white and on paper but I like Munjado too! The only thing I can think of that's sorta similar is rainbow letters!

Welcome to TechnoZi!

 Are you interested in Han Zi also known as Hanji or Hanja, the set of characters used to write a variety of dialects and languages throughout East and South East Asia and elsewhere around the world?

Chinese, Vietnamese, Cantonese, Japanese, Hokkien, Korean.

Whether you do traditional calligraphy, are learning an Asian language, or do typography in Asian scripts on a computer, I hope you'll join me as I share some of my  researches and experiments.

I am not fully fluent in Chinese or Japanese but that's probably my studies get diverted into pleasurable  minor paths of exploration as I research the meanings of words trying to translate ancient poems.

I also like to use Unihan and SVG to generate characters and then modify them with the computer!

Some times I scan characters and change the BG and add plug-ins and  filters.

This blog will apppear roughly about once a week!