Pictographic Chinese Calligraphy (80) Thinking Elephant - 想象

There were elephants living in Yellow River region about millions years ago. The weather changed, the forest disappeared, and elephants vanished at unknown time. However, ancient Chinese caught the elephant image in the oldest shell bone script (see the image below). 

The young generation didn't see the elephants, they could only hear what they looked like from the description of old people who saw the elephants. The young had to put all information they heard, form an image of the elephant in their brain. People called the process as "Thinking Elephant", which means "Imagination". But almost no any Chinese knows why "Thinking Elephant" is Imagination.

Ancient Chinese could see pig, dog, ox, horse, rooster, rabbit, and any animal, you don't need to get their images by imagination. But they had to get the image of elephant by imagination because the elephant disappeared in China, they couldn't see elephant.

The artwork is not pure Chinese calligraphy work, but a combination of drawing and pictography of Chinese character, a unique art no one has never tried before.

 

Pictographic Chinese Calligraphy (79) Freedom is no Free

 

Pictographic Chinese Calligraphy Announcement: the URLs will change

In Jan 10, 2024, the URLs for Amazing Chinese Characters and Pictographic Chinese Calligraphy will not work any more. 

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The two URLs are working right now, they are permanent URLs. You may change the bookmarks right now. 

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Preface

The Pictographic Chinese Calligraphy is an art of pictography of Chinese characters by emphasizing the pictography of characters to form a drawing alike calligraphy. Chinese always say that Chinese is half drawing and half language, which means that the characters are drawings and also language units, a unique art or language in the world. However, no one has ever tried to show this characteristics in the real artworks. 

Let me give a few examples.

The shell bone script of character Water is

The middle is river, the four dots are water drops. Ancient Chinese got. water from river, they drew a river with water drops to present Water. The character is very pictographic, the simplest drawing in the world. Chinese describes the unique characteristics of Chinese characters as "Half language and half art" (亦字亦画）.

Because the evolution of Chinese characters caused the loss of the pictography of the old characters, for example, the character Water becomes 

Almost no one couldn't tell which stroke represents which if he/she doesn't know the old scripts. Unfortunately, no text book, no teacher, no school are teaching students the old scripts in China, and overseas. People have no idea what the pictography of Chinese characters, even never heard of, the great characteristics has been ignored for at least two thousand of years. 

Let me show you how easy we can make a unique "half language and half art" Chinese pictographic calligraphy. I used the shell bone script of character Water as the only unit, created the following artwork:

Does it look like a river flowing from far?

Have you ever seen any drawing like this? No, you haven't.

I have tried to create drawing alike Chinese calligraphy since 2013, this blog is showing part of the artworks I have created in the last almost 10 years.

Because they are drawings, everyone can appreciate the artworks even not knowing any Chinese. 

The first 43 artworks have been published in the book "Pictographic Chinese Calligraphy" on Amazon. If you are interested in those artworks, you can read them for free if you are kindle unlimited member, or you can buy the book, there are eBook, paperback, or hardcover.

 

Pictographic Chinese Calligraphy (78) You Rabbit, Me Rabbit - You 兔，Me 兔

2023 is Year of Rabbit.

The Chinese characters in the artwork above:

1, Shell bone script of Rabbit

2, Big seal script of Rabbit

Changed a lot. The top is head, the middle is body, two legs, and one short tail. 

Both lines in the artwork mean the same but in different scripts:

Rabbit, Rabbit Rabbit, You Rabbit, Me Rabbit.

The pronunciation of character Rabbit is Tu4, exactly same as Two or Too. It is the only one by my knowledge of Chinese character pronounced exactly same as some English words. So we can pronounce the sentence as 

Tu, TuTu, You Tu, Me Tu, here Tu is Rabbit. 

The inspiration of this sentence is from when I watched my wife holding our son in 1999, a year of rabbit. My wife was born in year of rabbit, she and my son are both belong to Rabbit. therefore, I wrote

Rabbit, Rabbit Rabbit, You Rabbit, Me Rabbit. 

Sounds like they are talking each other. 

The sentence could be read like the following too

Tu, TuTu, You too, Me too.

or

Tu, Two Tu, You Tu, Me Tu (Rabbit, Two Rabbit, You Rabbit, Me Rabbit)

Anyway, in this sentence, we have 5 words pronounced Tu4 = Two, or Too. It is very meaningful and unique. 

The sentence could be consider as a half of Chinese couplet, we could find an another half to match. So far, not very good match yet. The closest is the following:

Dog, Dog Dog, Big Dog, Small Dog.

You may try to get better one. 

Pictographic Chinese Calligraphy (77) Ring out 2022, Ring in 2023

The Middle Chinese character is mixture of shell bone script and big seal script of Year.

Shell bone script of character Year

Big seal script of character Year

The top is Rice Crop, the bottom is Person. A person carries rice crops home, which indicates a harvest year.

Pictographic Chinese Calligraphy (76) American Dream - American 梦

 

The Chinese character in the artwork 

is character Dream of shell bone script.

The right one is Bed, the left one is a person who is dreaming on the bed. Why are the person and the bed vertical? Were ancient Chinese slept vertically? No, they slept horizontally as we do.

Because ancient Chinese used bamboo slips to write/draw the characters, the slip is very narrow, about 8 mm wide, difficult to write/draw the character horizontally, they wrote/drew the character vertically. There are some this kind characters which are in vertical, e.g. Bed, Horse, Dog, Pig, Tiger, etc.