The art store near me doesn't stock hake brushes (and their stock of calligraphy brushes in general doesn't impress me much) so I used a wide watercolor brush (1.5 inches wide), an old and very stiff acrylic brush (.5 inch wide) and a kuretake zig menso brush (goat and horse hair-- keeps shape very well).

 

The effect is not the same but I could still get some evocative brush strokes:

 

 

I was eager to start adding color. I brought out my watercolors, some heavy body acrylic, acrylic inks, and some old, cheap oil pastels I found in the free box in the laundry room at my last apartment.

It... well, it turned out.

 

I used cold press paper for this and I think I prefer a finer grain for mixed media. I struggled to make strong lines with the oil pastels, largely because they're both old and probably meant for elementary school kids, but I think also because of the paper texture.

 

But what I really wanted to try was Yupo paper. Mostly, when I find artists using Yupo paper "in the wild," they're working with alcoholic inks and sometimes watercolors for a very washed out look, so it was nice to see it used with ink. I'm pretty pleased with how this came out:

You can really see the texture where I swept away some wet ink; later I came back with a wash of metallic gold watercolor.

As I experiment further, I think I'd like to try to cover more of the paper with sumi ink and then work harder to "delete" it with rags or other media. I'll definitely keep experimenting with Yupo paper.