So I'm not artist, and I found that out earlier this year when I got this gut instinct to do something special for my wife's birthday. I love gut instincts, and personal gifts are awesome.
Anyway, even though I'm not a proficient artist, I actually enjoy it quite a bit. I've always had a creative streak, so I'm going to do another project in the upcoming months - maybe during Ango.
I did a lot of research, I found a local art shop asked a lot of questions, bla. I felt like I entered a whole new world. It's amazing. So, I decided I would do acrylic because everyone says that's a good beginner medium, so I picked that. Initially I wanted to paint a sumi-e (ink painting) inspired Sakura tree -- or Japanese cherry tree in bloom. I love that image, we had a dog named Sakura, so it would be really symbolic and heartfelt
Except, I realized, that I didn't have the skill level to pull it off (it's so much easier in my mind haahahha), and even though I'm not an expert, I wanted to still do something that looked ok. So I chose calligraphy. I love calligraphy, and I soon realized it is very difficult. Very difficult. And when you are using acrylic you are really painting more than doing calligraphy.
So anyway, I wanted to stick with acrylic because I wanted to make sure it lasted, and I figured I could get brush to canvas much more quickly, although one of my dreams is to actually study sumi-e painting and calligraphy. I've always loved it. I love the strokes, I love the red signature stamps and how they pop against the black figures.
So I set up an adhoc studio in my cube at work to keep this completely secret. I had to sand the canvas, apply this medium (I think that's the correct term) called gesso to make sure that the canvas would be as smooth as possible. I repeated this 2 additional times, waiting about 24 hours between gesso coats.
Then when I was ready, I used paper strips and tape to frame out where I would paint each character. I'm no good at freehand; holy cow is that hard. So I wanted this to be as symmetrical as possible.
Ultimately, and sorry for the long story, but the process is so much fun even if the end product isn't good.
My wife was adopted in the US when she was 7, but she's South Korean, so I wanted to mix something that I really love (calligraphy) with something about her.
So I did this Korean calligraphy that says "Darling, I love you". Now on the lower right, instead of this being a traditional signature stamp, it looks like one, but it actually says "Happy Birthday". So it's a play on traditional calligraphy, and I'm pulling at the heart strings to compensate for lack of skill. hahahahah
If you click on it, it should appear a little bigger in a pop-up.
Attachment 3622
Gassho,
Risho
-sattoday
