February 2025

Godkidlla 廖小子 is a highly regarded Taiwanese graphic artist.
Learn more about his work and political engagement in this Pancouver article about his lantern creation for Lunar New Year 2025 in Vancouver.

During this workshop, we got to experiment with different tools: traditional calligraphy brush, wide tip paint marker and squeezable round tip dabber marker.
It was so freeing to work with tools I'm not used to, or rediscovering the things you can do with a traditional brush.

📷 1: Self-introduction

I first drew roots with the traditional brush, because one side of myself is very grounded and practical, and also interested in the traditional/classical origins of things. Then I used the paint marker to very freely draw curves and waves, to represent my creative side, dance and trying to go with the flow. Once I was finished, I realized it looked a bit like a face and the roots became a flow of words coming out of my mouth, representing my love for words and writing. The whole thing can be seen as an infinite circle: anchoring myself and drawing from my roots to find my creative self, which in turn flows back out of me to plant new roots.

📷 2: Curves

Just experimenting with the wide tip paint marker.

📷 3: 跳舞 – Dance

I used the wide tip paint marker. I really love the result! I totally went with the flow on this one, not knowing what the result would be since it's such an unconventional tool for calligraphy. I quite literally let the pen dance on the paper.

📷 4: 山 – Mountain

Experiment with the wide tip paint marker.

📷 5 and 6: 返璞归真 – Return to one's true self

Photo 5 is with the brush, and 6 with the paint marker.
I actually really like the one with the traditional brush. I forced myself to write very quickly without trying to stick to the proper traditional way of writing calligraphy, and I'm quite happy with the result. I guess by being more intuitive, I came closer to my “true self”. But I think it's interesting that I did this with the traditional brush, the “proper” calligraphy tool. I guess it does reflect my personality in a way.
When it comes to calligraphy, I still have so much to learn and so much practice to do to understand the proper technique, to acquire a good, if not perfect, balance and harmony in my characters. But letting things go a bit was very freeing, and I think somehow it helped me reach a better harmony than when I try hard to write perfectly. I guess there's a lesson in there somewhere.

📷 7: 太湖石 – Tai Hu rocks

Experimenting with the squeezable round tip dabber marker.
I find those look a bit like 太湖石 Tai Hu rocks.

📷 8: 安娜 Anna (Anne, my name)

Wide tip marker (and a little mistake only the Chinese speakers will notice haha!)

📷 9: 写 – Write

With the round tip marker.
 
 
Then experimenting with much bigger size paper.

📷 10: 地水气 – Earth Water Air

Wide tip marker, except for the characters with traditional brush. I started this one completely intuitively, not knowing where it would go or what it would represent. Then Godkidlla mentioned the waves at the bottom looked like seismic waves. And from this I could see the earth, the water and the air. I decided to finish it by integrating the Chinese characters for those 3 words.

📷 11: 地 – Earth

Detail of 地水气 – Earth Water Air

📷 12: 水 – Water

Detail of 地水气 – Earth Water Air

📷 13: 气 – Air

Detail of 地水气 – Earth Water Air

📷 14: Tree stump

A super quick experiment at the very end of the workshop to draw a tree stump with the wide tip marker.
 
 
 
#art #calligraphy #graffiti #ink #brush #paintmarker #dabber #black&white #chinesecalligraphy #godkidlla