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Post by stickem on May 19, 2012 13:18:08 GMT
Ok, so here is the next round of The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross :shock: No worries I didn't paint any little "happy trees"... it's another tusba. This one is from Fred Lohman again. It started out looking like this photo from his website: Which can be found here: www.japanese-swords.com/tsuba-gallery/frameset.htmThese kanji are a Nichiren Buddhist prayer, which best I can tell is translated as: And of course, here is the painted version I finished last night which brings out the detail in Testor's silver. Remember to click on the thumbnail for a bigger view and please forgive the fact it was again, taken with my cell phone camera: The tsuba is made of steel. The mon is a tomoe/mitsudomoe of sterling silver added by Fred, the meaning of which in Japan I am not familiar with, but it is often used as a family crest. In Tibetan Buddhism, this symbol is called a gankyil, which I am familiar with as the symbol for Dzogchen or ' Great Perfection' method of Buddhist meditation. I call it ' Fred's Dead' out of homage to Lohman's work. Attachments:
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Post by John Greybeard on May 19, 2012 14:26:13 GMT
Very, very nice, S-man! Tasteful, elegant, really a major improvement on the original. Greybeard likes!!!
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Post by Deleted on May 19, 2012 17:48:49 GMT
Nicely done!
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Post by stickem on May 19, 2012 19:15:11 GMT
Grey ~
Thanks for the compliments. My German friend, Kat, has the painted tsubas right now.
When she gets some better pics of 'em made, then I'll post something that is not so fuzzy.
As you can see, my camera phone has no focus, so though it does have good resolution, it blurrs the close ups regularly :roll:
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Post by Deleted on May 21, 2012 5:17:36 GMT
I believe the mitsudomoe stands for "three commas" and futatsudomoe is the "two commas" posed like a yin and yang on a tsuba. Mitsubishi is "three diamonds" like in the car company.
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Post by stickem on May 21, 2012 13:58:47 GMT
Price ~ Indeed. Great minds think alike :shock: So seeing the connection between the mitsudomoe and the futatsudomoe, I had Lohman make a wakizashi tsuba with the tomoe mon to form a daishō with the previously shown Fred's Dead tsuba. The waki tsuba is again steel, this time in the shape of the tai chi Here it is: As usual, click on the thumb. BTW, I have no plans to paint this one... As you know, the "comma" shape is a commonly seen theme in Asia symbolism, both as a tripartite (as in a tomoe & mitsudomoe) or bipartite like the t'ai chi (aka yin & yang). So for some background, please note I am a practicing Tibetan Buddhist who has taken refuge with Lama Zopa Rinpoche, and making this sort of art is a bit of a spiritual practice for me as a Buddhist. Please do not be confused, as I am definitely not trying to proselytize to anyone here or have any sort of religious conversation about who's-god-can-beat-up-whom or anything in the slightest bit controversial. Rather I am just specifically speaking to the meaning of the symbols on the two Japanese tsubas at hand. So I see the tomoe tsuba as a gankyil because of the lenses I wear to look at the world. I also have practiced Chinese and Tibetan (and other) martial arts for many years. From this point-of-view, I can see the bipartite waki tsuba as a representation of yin & yang, and the tripartite katana tsuba as a representation of Heaven, Earth, and Man. These are common concepts in Taoist philosophy. So the interpretation of these symbols is pretty clear to me from my own specific vantage point... and obviously Buddhist and Taoist ideas flow back and forth from Japan/China/Tibet, so there is quite a lot of overlap between these perspectives. However, I have very limited experience in the Japanese arts (e.g., a couple of years of karate and juijitsu when I was young), so their interpretation from a Japanese point-of-view (e.g., the one from which most people look at a katana) is much more muddy. Hence, I do not mean to offend anyone who is Japanese by being ignorant, so am taking the time to try and understand what it means in Japan... If you are a nerd like me :ugeek: or want some further background on these subjects: Quote from: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TomoeAttachments:
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Post by stickem on May 28, 2012 2:11:17 GMT
So as I promised earlier in the thread, here are two new shots of the latest tsuba. Now they are actually in focus so you can see the silver detail (click on thumb): Attachments:
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