Sunlight shines through the paper in the sliding doors, casting latticework shadows on the tatami mat floor in the room where Hiroko Harada arranges the tools of her art: paper, brush, ink and inkstone.

BBC: The art of Japan

We were using typewriters, where the state of the art way to correct a typo was to backspace and put a strip of white paper behind the key and retype the word.

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While Tate Britain is showing his most famous industrial scenes, many of the Lowry's exhibits are art school sketches, preparatory drawings or visual aid memoires he made on scraps of paper while walking the streets of Salford and Manchester.

BBC: 'Real' Lowry in previously unseen art exhibition

Drawn on a piece of paper, the spokesman said it was "full of the pop art motifs we have now come to recognise, including Warhol's signature bright red lips, made using lipstick, and a typically pop art blocked background, coloured with green and orange felt-tip pen".

BBC: Warhol sketch

That is the challenge for every writer: to use words on paper to create a work of art.

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