hau jyan kang

hau jyan kang

GOOD HEALTH to you                HEARTINESS

The bottom of the bottom character has brushstrokes of the four directions, heartiness out to all!

Saryu's haiku

"willow tree"  calligraphy

Without a brush

The willow paints the wind.

               -Saryu

We brushed this haiku in class Tuesday.  My calligraphy here is somewhat willow-like, breeze-lifted.  While we were in class, outdoors there was great wind.  We were under a tornado warning!

Saryu's surname and his lifespan's dates are not known, evidently (unless you know them).   This haiku is from a book from The Art Institute of Chicago,  Zen Haiku, selections and translations by Jonathan Clements.

chang chang ge

chang chang ge

Chang chang ge is Chinese for "sing, sing, song"  or "lots of singing" or "there is song all around."

The calligraphy here does seem to move around:  from square to square, square with a line through it, square under a line, and there is emphasis and syncopation, lightness and heaviness of touch.  The open square is kou, "mouth." You see kou in the top two changs (and twice, smaller, in the lower character ge).  The other part of chang--the two squares each with an inside line--means "sun," "splendor."  So you have in the Chinese word for "sing" the notion of mouth and sun/splendor.

There is much song around, here in early July.  Robin fledglings are fussing, sparrow parents call out warnings, finches and orioles share the news of newly dried seedheads.  The cicadas have started buzzing eveningtime.  How is there one moment or word for "song"?

plum

qing

This is a calligraphy practice from Tuesday night's class. Reading top to bottom, right to left:

qing     lao     i  kuai  r 

green   old      together    =    Young and Old Together

Sandi and I also practiced some plum blossom painting.  The plum is a symbol of hope and endurance, blooming as it does so early--even in the snow--and blooming often on branches that are very old.

Sandi's granddaughter Alexis practiced with us.  Such a young, talented calligrapher in our midst.

plum practice

chrysanthemum

We go to Gretchen's cabin when we can, once or twice a year. We walk around in the woods, unless it's raining heavily as it was Saturday, and we have a wonderful lunch at the round oak table. Then we clear the table and set up for painting practice. This time at the cabin we had three vases of autumn flowers on the table with us, many of them chrysanthemums. Chrysanthemum is one of the four friends of traditional Chinese painting. It is the flower that "braves the frost." Below is a footnote about painting the four friends:

As with orchid, bamboo, and plum, painting the chrysanthemum as an independent subject was a fairly late development (about the x century), inaugurated and influenced by the literati. The associations of the chrysanthemum as the flower of late autumn, announcing the coming of winter and able to blossom in the cold, were developed through the xiii century.

This footnote is on the first page of the chapter on Chrsyanthemum Painting in The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting, which was first published, in stages, in the late 1600s. Besides bravery, pride and dignity are ascribed to the chrysanthemum in the chapter. My sketch is quite simple. I used charcoal and zinc white with a touch of grey green. The stem is darker green. The sketch needn't suceed; I was just spending time with the upright-graceful bloom. While I was at it, I did two quick watercolor sketches of thin branches outside the oak table's window. Here is one of them.