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Spec & fixation
Calligraphy paper
Calligraphy starts with special paper, called gGasennshi（画仙紙） or Washi（和紙）, with origins in ancient China and Japan. Washi is often aged for long periods of time before it ever makes contact with a calligrapher’s brush and ink. This is due to the unique properties of the paper – older paper becomes softer and begins to almost come to life, allowing inks to better bleed and spread throughout the paper’s fibers.
I usually use 10 year old Washi, called Kouseihai (紅星牌). Fifty 70x140cm sheets of Kouseihai costs approximately ¥40,000 JPY. I’ve found that this size balances well with with my style and brush strokes. Calligraphy is deliberate, precise and methodical – an individual work often takes hundreds of attempts to achieve balance between a character’s meaning and its visual flow and balance.
Ink
There are essentially 2 main categories of calligraphy inks: opaque ink, which is slightly viscous; and translucent, almost watery ink. Translucent ink is slightly clear and is traditionally either blue and brown in tint.
When selecting ink for a piece, an artist must first understand the paper. For example clear ink is traditionally paired with coarse, hard paper due to the ink’s more watery properties. This harder paper allows the more thin ink to bleed across the surface of the paper and take on a life and energy of its own. If ink and paper are not properly paired, the clear ink will stagnate and the energy and the flow will be lost. In this sense calligraphyis not only a form of art, but a form of chemistry and science.
All science is about experimentation and, when writing a new piece, one must first determine the proper combination of ink and paper. When determining the proper approach to a piece, a writer must take into account a number of variables beyond the aesthetic of a piece such as weather and temperature. To ensure a work has proper pairing of ink and paper, I usually rub ink stones. In doing so, I am able to personally oversee the condition of my ink, giving me a better understanding of the life the energy and life the ink will take on in the application process.
Clear ink needs more time to prepare and is best applied just when it is on the verge of going bad. In this brief window of time, the ink particles become more round allowing the ink to better live and bleed on the paper.
Calligraphy Brush
Calligraphy brushes are highly specialized and, as a result, quite expensive. The brush used on my larger works costs approximately ¥300,000. Calligraphy is a very technique based art form with different brushes used for different kinds of inks and application processes. Slight variations, twists, differences in brush use can greatly change the outcome of a work. Clear ink is typically applied with a stiffer brush, dark ink with a softer brush. Due to the nature of the inks used, once a brush is used for dark ink, it can never be used for clear ink so a calligrapher must have an assortment of brushes, an arsenal of tools carefully selected for each piece. Brushes are generally hand crafted and made with either wool, rabbit hair, horse hair, weasle hair or other animal hairs/furs.