Heh, it had to happen, sometime: I'm angling for trying to place some of my very own brush calligraphy in a public setting.

A very public setting. You see, one of the lads at our local dojo took up the initiative to search out some very nice t-shirts and polo-shirts, and got some samples made, with our club logo and "aikido" on the back.

In the traditional Chinese/Japanese characters, so 合気道, right? Except... yours truly spotted at least one fatal error in the calligraphy, and several places of "uhm, not so much good". I even checked the 気 with my teacher, to make sure it was not a varient I'd not encountered before. (There are such, due to processes of simplification, etc.) But this was not one such. As soon as I showed her my copy (and it hurt to have to write the character with that one mistaken stroke), she said, "Oh, no, that's absolutely a mistake." I had an immediate reaction of relief combined with "hooray! I spotted it!!"

Anyway, so. Now, I'm trying to reach the organizer of these lovely shirts and putting it to him, hopefully in a gentle way, that I could do the calligraphy, if his process of production hasn't proceeded beyond the point of being able to include a new set of artwork for the characters...

Ego, much? Not just that I'm offering this at such a stage (at least he's only starting to collect orders for the definitive production), but - egad!! - this is likely to be a bit of calligraphy work that I'll be looking at a very, very long time, seeing as how my dojo-mates are likely to keep these shirts and wear them about the place for years to come....

On the other hand, I don't seem to find this prospect 100% daunting, despite my protests. If I manage to get this done and accepted, I'm already planning on "signing" mine with a wee bit of red-threaded embroidery, in visual reference to the stamps/seals used on Oriental artwork.... vanity, pure vanity. *pththth*