Rakkan Seals Done Professionally

Well, I'm proud to say this will be only the second time or so that I have posted identical posts on both this blog and my personal blog.

The story is fairly long-winded: one day I was cruising YouTube as only I can do, using an Apple TV so it just appears on my TV screen instead of having to watch it all pinched on my laptop -- and I came across the fellow below. He is Henry Li, who makes a living in SoCal with his wife Victoria in a busy social world (whirl?) of Asian arts. He himself is an experienced painter, but what caught my attention was these "Seal stones" that I had come across while in Japan this summer. (Now this is a three-blog post!)


You can hear me babbling in the above video about how cool it would be to get a seal stone for my son Taishi, in order to make his "Shodo" calligraphy paintings that much more professional.

So when I got back to Montreal I started looking in to doing it myself -- the carving, that is -- and that's how I ran across Henry and his voluminous YouTube posts on various projects he's worked on (mine will be up there soon!)

I purchased the recommended equipment and then tried my hand at what Henry made look easy. It was a complete and utter failure. The clean lines that he was carving in his videos just came out as a bunch of scratches in my attempt.

I complained to Henry, and he admonished me that of course it wasn't easy -- in fact, it was one of the most difficult Asian art forms. Weeeeellll, THANKS A LOT, HENRY! was my thought when he told me that. But if you think about it, it isn't his fault that he makes it look so easy!

So I gathered up my supplies and basically said to Henry, "Okay, Big Guy, YOU do it." And that's exactly what he did, as you can see . . . I used the money I made teaching Japanese -- not much, but it adds up -- to scrape together enough for Henry not to do just one, but THREE completely different seals! And he gave me a phenomenal price -- at least saving me $75 minimum.

So that's my story. Of course, when he started them, Henry must have finished them in an hour or so, although my painful scratching must have taken an hour just by itself.

I'll let Henry tell you (and show you) the mess I made of my attempt in this video below, and I hope he'll soon be sending me a link to the video he made on MY stones.



I know Tai-chan is going to be blown away, because I certainly am!

The three stones Henry made

When I sent Henry the three stones I had (look at the box at lower left and right next to it) I also sent him a photo of Tai-chan, plus a calligraphy panel Tai-chan made last year. Well, after making the stamps, Henry arranged everything  artistically (see the stamps now on Tai-chan's panel!) and took this beautiful photo. What can I say? I'm blown away!