Calligraphy Lesson

Last weekend we were invited to a couple's house for lunch and a calligraphy lesson. The husband is a calligraphy teacher and offered to give us a lesson using traditional Japanese ink and brushes. It turned out to be very fun and interesting.

First we had to choose what characters we wanted to learn....we decided on love, beautiful, laugh, and travel.

Frank decided to master "love." The teacher kept making us write the same character over and over until he felt we mastered it to the best of our ability.

Melissa chose to learn to write "beautiful." During the beginning of the lesson, she kept doing touch ups after each stroke...which are apparently a big no-no! The amount of brush strokes are very important when writing Japanese calligraphy and there is an order of which lines you write first. Luckily the teacher had a sense of humor and thought it was cute!

Here are our finished pieces which our teacher later matted in a book for us to keep!