All Posts

https://www.aiki.com/aiki-shop In teaching Eastern brushwork again I find I see the class in two parts: Classical Japanese Calligraphy (Shodo) in which I actually hold the rank of Godan, and Zen Brush which, as you might've guessed, is outside all ranking systems. My classes are a combination of these studies. If we look at a painting we can see that it has two parts: form and energy. In my classes, we initially focus on both parts to ultimately paint with both. In this way,

https://www.aiki.com/minikins-small-zen-brush-watercolorsMy en plein air practice began in 2017 when I positioned myself at Yosemite to take a Japanese watercolorist I had befriended - Osamu 's - watercolor class every day for a week. It was wonderful and I learned a lot. Probably mostly that I was no good at watercolor .... at least, not yet. I tried some on line classes too, during Covid, and practiced washes and mountain landscapes. But in 2025, my son and I took a road tr