Shodou --- The Way of the Brush.

Yesterday I had my first calligraphy class, something that I just took for fun as an extra. I don't think we were expecting to be handed mini suitcases each containing a calligraphy kit, but then we did have to pay extra for the class. Our kits just contained the usual calligraphy stuff: brushes, mat, paperweight, bottle of ink... So, despite this, we spent the first half hour making our own ink. Like a squid! Well, if a squid made ink by grinding two stones together that statement would be more accurate I suppose. But we made our ink, and then were given two example sheets each, each one made by the sensei's own hand, in the customary orange 'teaching ink'. I wonder what kind of stones they use to make it orange? Well, I had no time to wonder, as we were then told to copy out the character for '3' (三) and '5' (五) until we "became good at it". And so, this activity made up the remainder of the lesson, as, alas, we were never to become good at it. I did wonder why we were handed about 30 sheets of paper each at the start of the lesson, wondering if we'd really need them all. Turns out that we did. So, between making those characters and making more ink as we kept running out, the lesson passed not too quickly. It ended as we ran out of paper, and were cleaning up all of the ink that we'd splattered everywhere. Sensei then showed us where to put all of our hard work.

In the bin.