I have two types of autographs. One is alphabets and another is Chinese characters. Both are script form. I’ve written alphabet autograph until 2017, but my novella collection Hello, World! let me consider writing autographs in vertical. The cool title page designed by Jun Kawana did not have a space to write the wide alphabet autograph.
That was a good opportunity to design a new autograph because Chinese autographs had been requested in the anglophone world.
The design was not easy because I write with my left hand. All the script characters pull lines, but I should push pens in. Then I researched the strokes in searching Chinese calligraphy databases. Finally, I found a good crown “艹” shape, a left bottom “月” one and right bottom “泰”. I merged three shapes into the first letter of my name “藤”.
Second character “井” is far from traditional script. Standard drawing order starts horizontal bars , of course draffing from left, but I connect three lines into one stroke. Starting from right top. Right vertical bar is shared last character ”洋”. Third character ”太” is same. All lines are connected, and it seems like ”L”
Anyway, I didn’t have enough autograph sesstion this year. Last time I had it was, joint semminar with an artist Ai Hasegawa. Even though I participate Con’s, autograph table is on the physical world.