Today is the last day of January, and thus the last day of my month of Chinese calligraphy. And, as it turns out, the last of my ink! Not terrible timing, I suppose, though I could have done with a few millilitres more, as you’ll see.
I thought it was worth taking a look at where I was at the beginning of the month, when I had little idea of how any of this worked and hadn’t yet found any instructions online. Here’s Day One:
Bit laughable really.
Here’s today’s work, which is a bit scratchy due to lack of ink, and is a recap of all the characters I learnt over the last couple of weeks.
Not bad for just 15-30 minutes a day, and for less than a month – it took a couple of weeks just to figure out how to control the brush and how thick the ink needed to be (although I’ve got a lot of work to do on both of those fronts still!).
So, what have I learnt? Well, firstly, that there’s a lot of joy in doing something for the sake of it, without having a goal or any pressure. I’ve also learnt that you can improve rapidly with just a small amount of time devoted every day. I’m actually surprised with how much my basic skills have developed since Day 1. It’s really rather satisfying!
Will I come back to this at some point? Yes, I probably will, though I’ll get the right liquid ink this time, rather than grinding up the solid stuff that came with the set. And I’ll invest in a better brush. But for now, I am done. Tomorrow, I start learning crochet stitches.
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