Daily Creativity: Tai No Henko Ni – 95 degree pivot

Daily Creativity: Tai No Henko Ni - 95 degree pivotDaily Creativity: Tai No Henko Ni – 95 degree pivot

Tai No Henko Ni is the second of the basic movements in Yoshinkan Aikido. In english we call it 95 degree pivot, it is used when uke is pushing on you and you need to get out of the way to let uke follow that energy. I know this looks a lot like Tai No Henko Ichi, but that makes sense because most of these movements we start in a classic kamae stance, and end in an altered stance, but still kamae because everything is on the center line. The difference here is the figure is lower to the ground, knees bent more, and hands at a different position. Yes, you may have to be an aikinerd to see the difference, yes I am that aikinerd. The photo I used this time was not someone I knew personally, but someone from the hombu dojo.

Ink on Paper.

Daily Creativity: Tai No Henko Ichi – Cross Step and Body Change

Daily Creativity: Tai No Henko Ichi - Cross Step and Body ChangeDaily Creativity: Tai No Henko Ichi – Cross Step and Body Change

Tai No Henko Ichi is the first of the basic movements in Yoshinkan Aikido. In english we call it cross step and body change. It allows you to divert your energy around something, like a person or a strong point, to find the weak point, and end up on top of uke.

Funny thing, while looking for photos to work from for this, the one I used ended up being someone I know I have worked with at a previous kenshu. I found other pictures of him with the sensei running the kenshu I was at last weekend. Yoshinkan is a small world.

Ink on paper.

Daily Creativity: Kamae

Daily Creativity: KamaeDaily Creativity: Kamae

Kamae is the stance that all of aikido is based on. In this drawing I plotted out the angles to create the proper stance, and then drew in the lines hoping to evoke the movement that was about to happen. Tek said he’d like to see other stances and some techniques in this style. I was inspired by the day’s teaching at the kenshu. Ink on paper.

Daily Creativity: Usagi (Ous/Osu/Oss-agi!)

Daily Creativity: Usagi (Ous/Osu/Oss-agi!)Daily Creativity: Usagi (Ous/Osu/Oss-agi!)

As many know, I practice Yoshinkan Aikido, a common word used is Ous (aka Osu aka Oss) which is like Q’apla in Klingon, it can be used for anything but no. It’s a shortening for a whole expression, but is used often to mean more than the original meaning. It’s slang that was picked up by dojos, and many arts you’ll hear it. It sounds a lot like the beginning of the word for Rabbit, Usagi. So I got it in my head to draw a rabbit aikidoka. So here is my Rabbit in a hakama. Markers on Paper.

Daily Creativity: Elephant Judo

Daily Creativity: Elephant Judo

Daily Creativity: Elephant JudoElephant’s practicing Judo? Why not? Tonight’s art was requested by Tek aka UpsideDownandFlying on tumblr. Tek loved the race picture I did and the Ele-family picture so he wanted to see them practicing Judo. We both love watching the heavyweight judo, it really is the most entertaining of the IJF highlight videos. Of course one of the reason I might like the heavyweight matches is because that matches my body type and my type of martial arts. I practice yoshinkan aikido but both aikido and judo have the same root. I really enjoyed drawing this and how it came out, so there may be more of a series of theses in the future.

Colored pencils on paper

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