Monday, November 11, 2024

Final calligraphy exhibition submission for 2024

I have finally submitted my piece for the New Year Exhibition of Sankei Sho International Association 産経国際書展新春展 (deadline 15 November 2024; actual exhibition 22 January to 3 February 2025). This is the final submission for 2024 before the next round of submissions start in April 2025.

For this exhibition, I decided to write a phrase from Sun Tzu's The Art of War.
其疾如風、其徐如林、侵掠如火、不動如山
which means something like "fast as the wind, quiet as the forest, aggressive as fire, and immovable as a mountain".
Warlord Takeda Shingen took this phrase and used
疾如風 徐如林 侵掠如火 不動如山
as his war banner, and this phrase is also shortened to 風林火山 too.

Note: The actual piece submitted will be in a subsequent post, after I see it at the exhibition venue in January 2025.

Here are examples of an earlier version, with a layout of 2 lines, 8 characters per line.

I then decided to change the layout to something like this, same two lines, but 9 characters in the first line and 7 characters in the second line.

I also tried writing the phrase using a different type of brush stroke.
 
The final leg of preparation, which lasted about two weeks, generated this amount trash.

Well, now that I have submitted the piece, time to start thinking about what to write for next year's round of exhibitions!

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