Shuji/Kokuji Carving

I started carving at Shuji class at Kichijoji Temple in Fujiyoshida in 2009. My first piece was entered into the national Kokuji competition at Ueno National Museum last April, which makes me sound much better at carving Kanji than the reality. There were over 2000 pieces on display for about a week at the national museum. Anyway, I like calligraphy (shuji) and enjoyed the carving so much, that I took it up in my spare time here in Salida.



These carvings are made from White Pine, which is a very hard, hard wood. A little softer wood, which is better for carving is Basswood, but I couldn't find any here. The process up to the point of this picture is as follows:

1. Practice and write your chosen Kanji on regular caligraphy paper.
2. Outline the Kanji on tracing paper, taking into account size of wood piece.
3. Glue tracing paper to wood, as in the above photo.
4. Cut straight down into the wood around the entire outline with chizels.
5. Carve from inside to the precut outline, and remove any ridges left in the center.



6. Paint the inside of the carving.



The finished piece. Looks simple, right? This piece took me about 6 hours from start to finish. Let's try something a little more difficult...



This is not even half of the total pages I used to practice these Kanji. "Reiho" means sacred/devine mountain peak. This is probably the most detailed carving I have yet attempted.



Carving details into wood is very satisfying. It feels good to see the characters actually turn out OK. It gives me a sense of accomplishment. However, especially with this hard white pine, many of the thin sections between lines snap out of the wood, so you have to be careful to catch them and glue them back in before they are lost in the sea of off-cuts.



Painting is more difficult than it looks. One must be careful not to splash paint outside the carving (more expert carvers will use good glue that keeps the tracing paper on after carving out the characters so that it acts as masking...the problem is finding a glue that is strong enough to hold the paper on through carving, but light enough to allow you to easily REMOVE the paper at the end).



The finished piece! Hmmm...I might consider entering this one into the National Competition this year again...