In June 2021, my calligraphy teacher moved to the other end of Honshu and has basically stopped teaching. Which leaves me in a tight spot, since I am now qualified to take my grading to become a calligraphy teacher (師範) but I will have to do it on my own. It is really difficult since there is no one to guide me along, but I told my teacher I would try for the grading (it will span two sessions, one each year 準師範 -> 師範). And so, for the past few months, ever since the grading criteria came out, I have been practising.
It is not easy. For two of the pieces, I need to actually compose what I want to write based on the given characters, choosing how to write each character (the style) as well as the overall layout. This was something that my teacher used to help me with in the past, and it is really the first time that I am doing this on my own. It entails some trial and error, planning out a piece, writing it a few times, then changing the way of writing certain characters and the overall layout, and repeating this process until I settle on a piece that I think is acceptable. Then, it is practice, practice, practice to write it properly.
There is also the "copy" or "imitate" piece, where you basically try to imitate the work of a calligraphy master as best as you can. This required a bit of my computer skills, since the grading piece is printed in a booklet, and I needed to expand it out to the actual size to be submitted. See this post on how I did that.
By the way, this is how I let the pieces dry during practice. It is actually a clothes hanger for indoor drying, but it works really well for drying calligraphy pieces when it is not used for drying clothes. 😅
There is still about a month left to go, which should be enough time for me to finish practising the last piece (I need to submit four pieces) and then actually write the pieces that have to be submitted. Wish me luck! 😉
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