More Japanese brush art at Box Hill Community Arts Centre

This morning I attended another workshop on Japanese brush techniques - this one was called 'Japanese SumiE Ink Painting' and our tutor was Junko, who was just as charming as Miho was last week. The ink and brushes we used were the same as last week, and the technique very similar but this time we were painting pictures instead of letters. After showing the students examples of her own beautiful work, Junko demonstrated how to use the brush to create different effects on the paper. After we'd practiced for a while, she encouraged us to paint bamboo, which she said was the easiest one to start with.

Then she showed us how to paint two fish. I was too heavy handed with the ink, and my poor fish are much darker than they are meant to look.

Then we could choose what we wanted to do. One of Junko's paintings was of a fluffy cat, and I asked if I could copy it and she gave me her painting to work from. I am very critical of my own work, as well as being impatient and wanting to do something perfect the first time, so I wasn't overly pleased with my version of her cat. But she was delighted with it; I was the only student who did the cat, the others were doing flowers and birds.

Japanese Calligraphy workshop

On Saturday morning, I attended a two hour workshop on Japanese calligraphy.  One of my friends did a workshop with the same tutor a while ago, and she enjoyed it very much.
I would love to have attended that class, but it is on the other side of town, and a bit too far for me.  So I was pleased when I heard about the workshops Miho was doing this weekend closer to home.
The morning workshop was about brush painting on canvas, and the afternoon one was on making greeting cards.

Miho is a charming lady and an excellent teacher.  She provided all the brushes, ink, paper and canvas for us to work with, and she was very patient with our efforts to handle the brush correctly to get the brush strokes right.  After we'd practiced various brush strokes on paper, she gave us each two stretched canvas boards to do a final  painting.

Here are my two - a Japanese letter meaning "Happiness" and a very basic plant (which I think I have placed on the wrong angle for this photo, darn  it).  Miko provided the red seal to stamp on our canvases to denote the finished art.  She insisted mine was good, but admitted that it takes many years of practice to achieve excellent results.  As it does with any calligraphy!