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Chinese Character Practice Grid: My Very First Creation with Affinity Publisher Disclaimer: I’m a total newbie. I couldn’t find any tutorials relevant to the task, so I decided to just “wing” it. However, I am quite pleased with the results, simple as they are. (1) I don’t know if it’s possible to draw different types of lines in Affinity Publisher, so I designed the grid itself in Microsoft Word, a variation on the traditional jeougongger 九宮格 “nine square grid” approach. (2) I imported a smaller grid into Affinity Publisher, copied it once using Ctrl-C, then pasted multiple copies into place using Ctrl-V to create an A4 sheet (keyboard shortcuts I have been using in Microsoft Word for over 20 years). The individual squares did not quite line up, so I had to fiddle with the positions for quite a while (less than ideal). (3) I then used the Slender Gold font (based on the calligraphic style of the last emperor of the Song Dynasty) to type in the three characters of a Chinese name I chose for a foreign friend. I was quite pleased to discover that Affinity Publisher automatically snaps the characters exactly into the center of each box. I typed in an English title using GR Tonal Spelling, AKA Gwoyeu Romatzyh 國語羅馬字 (guan is 1st tone, guann is 4th tone). (4) I exported the resulting file as a PNG file. The menu item was exactly where I expected it to be. (5) Finally, I cropped the first three boxes using Photoscape. Maybe Affinity Publisher has cropping tools built in? *** Initial verdict: I was very pleased that a total newbie like myself could create a usable. I created an attractive design without even reading the instructions (the tutorials I found were not helpful). I still have a lot to learn, but so far I feel that my money was well spent. Problem: Although I bought the software directly from Serif, it cost me about US $65 (not sure why it costs more in Taiwan: my income is very limited). I hope I can pick up the Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer at Black Friday discounts.

I work more heavily with and I am more familiar with Japanese art but I have a soft spot for all Asian art. In the past year or so I've seen so many beautiful Chinese prints and pictures and when I saw this one some months ago, I thought it would be a great one for me to do in my style. I did this one with all vectors in Affinity Designer and I did two versions, one regular and one that shows the wind but something about the wind bothered me but I decided to present it as well even though I feel that it is distracting and not as good as the one without the wind. One thing I'd love to see added to Designer sometime is some vector brushes or different vector strokes with customizable ends so that I could more easily replicate the look of using a fude (Japanese brush or a similar style ink brush normally used to write calligraphy but is great to draw with too) using pure vectors. This picture is my stylized version of Lie Yukkou, a famous Daoist philosopher based on an old picture by a Chinese artist named Zhang Lu. Thanks for taking time to view my work. Best regards, Hokusai