I bought this for my wife a month or so ago and she loves it to practice her Japanese writing skills. Just use water on the brush and it paints and gradually fades away. You can use any brush on the board, if you want detail or big fat strokes. The only difficulty is figuring out how much water to put on the brush - when I've tried it I've ended up with a few dark blobs which didn't dry out for quite a while. That said, they did eventually and the board was ready to use again!