Pincel pen
FOUR NOTES ON THE USE AND ENJOYMENT OF THE BRUSH
1) – Kinesthetic learning during the use of the brush
During the winter of 2015, a person who came to the Thursday classes came back from her home and very distressed told me:
-“The bamboo leaves weren’t coming out so I decided to cut the brush bristles”
At that moment I had a pause in my breathing and the hairs on my skin stood up.
How could that person have attributed to such a noble tool the “poor” execution of a stroke as simple and resonant as the bamboo blade?
How much do we know (or not) about the tools we use in the practice of Japanese/Chinese painting and calligraphy?
At that moment I understood that my relationship with the brush as a sister tool was and is much more intense than I considered on a rational level.
For professionals and regular practitioners of Japanese painting and calligraphy, brushes are A NATURAL EXTENSION OF THE BODY.
In the book “Discourse on Painting by the Bitter Gourd Monk”, Master Shitao tells us that a brushstroke is born from the HEART, runs along the SHOULDER, passes through the ELBOW and WRIST joints, branches out to all the fingers that are -almost always- in contact with the brush and materializes through the brush on the surface of the sheet of paper.
This journey of energy through our body is a description that often appears in some ancient treatises and that in our case is already part of a good habit acquired with awareness and practice.
Like all experience, it is non-transferable, but like all knowledge, it can be shared, at least through body language. That is why, in order to understand the strokes we study in class (both Elena and I) we often take our students' hands while they are executing a stroke. In this journey of the “duet brush” we understand things that are only possible thanks to BODY KINESTHETICS, we receive information that, through the effect of movement and experience, becomes significant learning.
That is why we repeat over and over again: “There is no need for so much pressure”, “The gesture must continue even after the stroke has been made”, “Don’t forget to breathe while you paint”. These are some of the small and large actions that allow us to give free rein to the brush. The brush of which we are a part.
2) – Anatomy of the brush
Recently Elena gave me a brush called “garlic head”; this soft-bristled brush is especially useful for painting flower petals such as chrysanthemums or orchids. The brushes take their names from elements of nature, just as rocks remind us of curled clouds.
There are a vast number of types of brushes depending on the
1) - type of hair (deer, rabbit, horse, cat, or a mix of any of them, among many others)
2) - the shape (“willow leaf brush”, “sparrow head brush”, “face brush” or “garlic head”)
3) - length of the brush hairs (long, short, very long, medium)
Handles can also be made of wood, bamboo, ceramic and plastic (the latter is almost always of the lowest quality).
But some things can always be said. Starting classes and having five or six new brushes within a week shows us that we have the material means to acquire them. Starting classes and doing at least 100 practice sheets in a week shows us that we want to deepen our knowledge of the behaviour of brush hairs. There are no unequivocal recipes for the use of tools, these are choices based on knowledge and experience.
But as the “purists” say, when Sumi-e or Shodo are a path, a single brush is enough.
To name them all in this post would be a long task. However, it is more useful to clarify that brushes are neither good nor bad: each one serves a specific moment. Thus, a brush with hard bristles will serve to paint rocks and a brush with soft bristles to write Kana. Part of our learning is going through these experiences to know what is more comfortable, simpler, more convenient or more useful.
Both Elena and I used just one brush in our first months of study a few years ago. She still uses this brush to make her corrections with orange, so she has more than fifteen years of practice under her belt. On the other hand, I recently discovered that a four euro brush, which I bought in a Chinese shop in Madrid several years ago, helps me draw the most energetic ensos I could ever have imagined. With this I want to point out that there is no “universal advice” on the use and enjoyment of brushes.
4) A collective experience to make brushes in Japan
In 2015, when we made our first trip to Japan, we visited a brush factory and held a workshop where everyone made their own brush.
A series of steps full of highly specialized procedures, where fine motor skills are worked on. Procedures based on a technology built on ancient wisdom. A great learning experience, more than necessary to understand how this tool is built.
Here you can see more photos of the procedures learned and you can always come to our workshops in Madrid to continue learning about them, our great friends the brushes.
Luciana Rago and Elena Hikari
3) - Fudekuyo 筆供養 : the ancestral cult towards brushes
A Japanese ritual that we like to mention as a reference to the importance of this tool is the so-called Fudekuyo 筆供養, an ancestral cult towards brushes that is still completely valid today.
There are several temples in different parts of Japan that celebrate Fudekuyo, but one of the most famous is the Tofukuji temple 東福寺, in Kyoto. This temple was built in 1236 by order of Kujo Michiie, a great statesman of the Kamakura Period. This temple is visited by many people on Fudekuyo day, who bring their writing instruments (brushes, pencils or even papers) for the bonfire ritual, where, after a few prayers led by the monks of the temple, they are burned. There are even people who send their brushes to be burned by the monks. It is said that if the smoke from the bonfire touches you, your writing technique can improve.
The Buddhist ceremony begins in the main hall of the temple, then they go out into the street to parade with the Mikoshi, which is a portable shrine where they carry the brushes. And in the evening they return to burn the brushes in the bonfire, to give thanks for the work accomplished.
Of course, and not surprisingly, they also have tombs for brushes, called Fudezuka 筆塚.
