Sunday, September 9, 2018

Pictographic Chinese Calligraphy (39) Vast sky allow birds to fly freely - 天高任鸟飞

"The sky is high to let birds to fly freely" - 天高任鸟飞 is a famous Chinese proverb, which means that the world is big to allow people who have ambitious to make dream come true.

Let's see the characters involved in the proverb.


Sky - small seal script




in which 


means Big - a person opens his arms and legs. On the Big's top, add a line, meaning bigger or higher than Big which is Sky.

High - Shell bone script


which is an ancient city gate tower, the highest building in that time. 

Allow - small seal script
the left part is Human or People, the right part is Tool, which means that a skillful craftsman who can make impossible to possible.

Bird - big seal script

which is just an image of bird.

Fly - modified shell bone script (I discussed in Post 1).

So here we go for the art work: 

The sky is very high to allow birds to fly freely 



I modified "High" a little bit. 

奋(奮)- I am just a little bird, wanting to fly, yet unable to fly high.

  The above is the   bronze script form   of the character “奋” (fèn). Strictly speaking, I’m not creating something new—I’m simply writing i...