January 2017

C17: Day 16 – Gou

January 16, 2017

Gou! A whole page of the bottom bit of a downstroke. Tomorrow, I’ll join all them up together into ‘yong’.

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C17: Day 15 – Pie

January 15, 2017

Today is a day for a nice, lovely pie! As ever, the challenge is creating a nice, smooth start to the stroke, rather than a smooth end, which is relatively easy. But getting the right shape for the start (top right) without it going all ragged is really hard. However, this video seems to show that […]

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C17: Day 14 – Learning the names

January 14, 2017

Now I’ve finished the second tutorial video, I’ve moved on to a diagram of the strokes from Wikipedia, that source of infinite knowledge.   I have so far done héng (Days 4, 5, 8), shù  (Day 10), dian (Day 11), wan (Day 12) and nà (Day 13), so today is tí. It’s really hard to […]

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C17: Day 13 – Diagonal lines

January 13, 2017

Today’s exercise is a downward diagonal stroke to the right, and I have to say that I think I’m improving! Many of these look far closer to how they should look than I was anticipating. Still some detailed control to develop, but definite improvement!

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C17: Day 12 – The real Day 12

January 12, 2017

Slightly curvy down strokes today, along with a few extras because I had a little ink left. I was right about needing the pen ink to be a little thicker. It didn’t take much, but it made a difference!

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C17: Day 11 – Poxy dots

January 11, 2017

So this week, we’re mainly going to be ignoring the fact that I got a day ahead of myself this evening, and we’re also going to ignore just how crap my dots are. I found the explanation of the stroke movements in the video really confusing – the diagram and explanation were at odds with the […]

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C17: Day 10 – Vertical lines

January 10, 2017

Yesterday I came to the end of the exercises from the previous video, so I found a new one: I also decided to use some black pen ink instead of spending ages grinding the solid ink that came with the set, which saved me about 15 minutes (the whole thing’s only supposed to take 15 minutes!). The […]

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C17: Day 9 – Lines with rounded ends

January 9, 2017

More lines! This time, lines with rounded ends. Slightly easier than the other lines, not that these are as lovely and smooth as they ought to be, but gotta start somewhere. Big error today was putting too much water in the grinding plate and after 15 minutes of grinding still having watery, crappy ink. That’s […]

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C17: Day 8 – Lines! Lots of lines!

January 8, 2017

Today’s lines are much improved on previous attempts and I’m bordering on almost pleased with them! I started with the small brush and then took a leap and tried the bigger brush that came with the kit again. It behaved better now that I know I need to load it up with more ink. Still […]

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C17: Day 7 – More tiny triangles

January 7, 2017

Today was another pretty long session of little triangles, or as some of them look like, little feet. Starting to feel like my control over the brush is improving, but it’s still difficult to really keep the edges crisp. I was a bit lazy on grinding the ink, as you can see by how light […]

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C17: Day 6 – A new brush!

January 6, 2017

Today, I felt like I really learnt something! I found a smaller brush (on the right) that has roughly the same shape as the ones that came in the set, and I think I did a better job with the little triangles. They are smaller, but I think better formed. I also learnt that one cannot […]

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C17: Day 5 – Brushes

January 5, 2017

Day 5, pretty much like Day 4, and I am losing patience with these brushes. There’s just no way that this brush is going to give good results, given how it splits and doesn’t hold its shape. It’s also shedding bristles like they are going out of fashion. Tomorrow, I will have a look through […]

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C17: Day 4 – Triangles and lines

January 4, 2017

Welcome to Day 4 of my 2017 creative challenge. Today is Triangles and Lines Day, aka, Holy Fuck This Is Really Hard Day. I can’t imagine that today’s creative session was helped by a migraine which is, sadly, still ongoing as I write this. Early night tonight, that’s for sure. But nevertheless, I soldiered on […]

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C17: Day 3 – Triangles

January 3, 2017

Today’s session was spent making little triangles! I found a video on YouTube (below) and decided that it was as good a place to start as any. My triangles are variable, but I did feel like I was making some progress. Some triangles were easier than others, and it’s clear that it requires a lot of […]

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C17: Days 1 & 2 – Brush calligraphy

January 2, 2017

My year of being creative every day got off to a slightly time-shifted start. I sat down on New Years Eve for my first session of brush calligraphy, because I knew that yesterday I would spend literally all day in a car, driving from just north of Dallas to northern Illinois, and so it was. […]

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