Calligraphy, anyone?
Every Monday and Wednesday, I spend two hours in the afternoon attending Chinese calligraphy class. I'm not one who strikes many as extraordinarily artistic, so I guess that's why I'm in this class. But it's also because I did take English calligraphy in junior high, and wanted to absorb as much language and history culture as possible while here.
During the first few lessons, we started with single strokes, mainly consisting of horizontal and vertical lines, boxes, slanted and angular lines and groups of dots. This past week, we graduated from boring tic-tac-toe scratches to writing full, comprehensible characters (see one of my written examples in the photo above).
Like English calligraphy, Chinese calligraphy has different forms. It also requires a steady hand and perfect posture. Today, we wrote to the tunes of a Chinese violin, erhu. If only I had my Chinese robe and hairpiece in place, I think my characters would have turned out even more graceful.
Anyway, I'm enjoying the class and by the end, I hope to complete a poem written on one of those long, fancy scrolls. And we're told we get to make fans too; I could use one in this weather, that's for sure.
During the first few lessons, we started with single strokes, mainly consisting of horizontal and vertical lines, boxes, slanted and angular lines and groups of dots. This past week, we graduated from boring tic-tac-toe scratches to writing full, comprehensible characters (see one of my written examples in the photo above).
Like English calligraphy, Chinese calligraphy has different forms. It also requires a steady hand and perfect posture. Today, we wrote to the tunes of a Chinese violin, erhu. If only I had my Chinese robe and hairpiece in place, I think my characters would have turned out even more graceful.
Anyway, I'm enjoying the class and by the end, I hope to complete a poem written on one of those long, fancy scrolls. And we're told we get to make fans too; I could use one in this weather, that's for sure.
posted by mishlchang at
1:28 AM
2 Comments:
huh? "not extraordinarily artistic"? are you serious? this is from the girl who owns paints and canvas and her room is decorated with beautiful paintings and who is really into artsy photography and has a fancy digital slr with 3 different lenses.
huh?
you don't really need an excuse for taking calligraphy class. pretty much everyone knows you love that kind of stuff :-)
that's like me saying "i'm not one who strikes many as someone who is into extreme outdoor sports, but i've decided to take up skydiving"
Dude. Kiteboarding? Extreme? Oh c'mon. :P
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