Calligraphy practice for upcoming exhibition

Now that I have passed my calligraphy grading, what's next?

Submitting a work for a national-level exhibition has been something that I wanted to do. I even told my teacher that I would try to submit something, eventually, for the Mainichi Shodo (Calligraphy) Exhibition. There are, however, some challenges. Meanwhile, I thought that, maybe, I can submit something for the upcoming exhibition that my teacher's calligraphy society is organising.

So I took an old phrase, and started practising.

This is just the initial stage, to get an image of what I want to write. Next would be a lot more practice, and to try and give the work more life.

 

Update 4 September 2023: I am considering if I should use this instead for the upcoming exhibition.

🤔

Update 12 September 2023: I am playing around with the layout. 5 by 5?

 

Or 8 by 3.

Both options seem to work. 5 by 5 makes full use of the paper but can look a bit... crowded and noisy. 8 by 3 leaves a bit of white space at the end and I will need to work on each character to give them more flavour.