Zen Brushwork

With its bold strokes and mystic aura, Zen calligraphy has intrigued many Westerners since the 19060s, but has remained a little-understood art form. Here, master calligrapher and swordmaster Tanchu Terayama offers detailed lessons in Japanese techniques of the brush, as well as an in-depth appreciation of calligraphy's most subtle elements. Section one covers the basics (history, tools and posture) and presents a unique yoga-like warm-up to establish the proper mental attitude and release creative energies. Next, the power of the brushed line is diagnosed and practised. What makes a good line or a bad one, an expressive effort or an unfocused one? Then come lessons in penning symbolic Japanese characters, and finally Terayama teaches readers how to draw the elegant pictorial themes of this classic art: bamboo, plum blossoms, Mount Fuji, and the inspirational, if apocryphal, Zen patriarch Bodhidharma.