Pictographic Chinese Calligraphy (35) Soar up into the sky with one start ： 一飛冲天

SpaceX falcon 9 liftoff is "Soar up into the sky with one start",
same as Chinese famous proverb "一飛冲天”。
The four characters are: 一 (one), 飛 (fly), 冲 (rush), 天 (sky).
which means "Once take off, fly and rush into the sky".

After a modification, with brush I created my Chinese calligraphy artwork "Soar up into the sky with one start" - Congratulations on the successful launch of Falcon 9!

Let's see the related characters.
The top is Arabic number 1 to express Chinese character One:  一, the big 1 on the top looks like the rocket of Falcon 9

The second is character Fly, its big seal script is

a flying bird on the sky.

The third is character Rush, its big seal script is

two dots on the left are water drops, and the right is character Middle/Center, the character means "In the middle of rushing river".

The fourth is character Sky, its small seal script is

The character Big:

formed by 人,  which means human, plus two arms open, we got character Big. 

Put a line on the top of the Big, we have the character Sky because over Big is Sky. 

The character in the artwork is like the rocket launch fire on the bottom, push the Falcon 9 up.

Therefore, the artwork above means

One

Fly 

Rush

Sky

"Soar up into the sky with one start".

Congratulations on the successful launch of Falcon 9!

Pictographic Chinese Calligraphy (34) Chang E flies to the moon - 嫦娥奔月

There is a famous fairy tale "Chang E flies to the moon" for hundreds if not thousands years in China. Chang E' husband Hou Yi was the strongest archer on earth in that time.

There are many visions of the tale. One says that Hou Yi had been a god in sky, but made mistake, being demoted down to earth. But others say that he grew up on earth.

It is said that by some unknown reason, there were ten suns on the sky, the earth became very very hot, all plants and animals were dying. Hou Yi decided to shoot the suns down. He went to the mountain, and shot the suns one by one, total nine of them. So the earth was back to normal. He became to a hero.

Because his contribution, the Western Goddess gave him elixir, which could let him be alive forever. He kept the elixir in Chang E hand but Chang E took the elixir without Hou Yi's consent. After she took the elixir, she became lighter and lighter, floated up, and flied to the moon, never came back.

People believe that Chang E is sill on cold moon, very lonely.

Ok, we now know the story. Let's use the characters to show the picture.

The small seal script for character Chang is

on the left is character Woman, or Lady

on the right part

means a fashionable skirt. It looks like a lady wearing a skirt.

The two parts together means "a lady wearing beautiful skirt".

The small seal script for character E is

Again, the left part is character Woman, or Lady,

the right part means "Wow!". The two parts together means that a lady is so beautiful that every man say "Wow!" when see her.

The big seal script for character Rush is

the top is a man moving his arms, and the bottom are three feet. Why three? Because, you would only see blurry feet moving very fast in running.

Here the Rush is same as Fly. Why use Rush not Fly in Chinese? Because Rush is in a hurry mode, but slowly in moving in comparison with Fly. Chang E stole the elixir, so she was nerves. Actually she didn't expect that she could fly after taking the elixir. She was just floated into sky, and flied slowly to moon by the wind, like walking in the air.

The shell bone script for Moon is

We can put all the characters together to form an artwork: Chang E flies to the moon.

Pictographic Chinese Calligraphy (33) From Ape to Apple - 从猿到手机时代

The small seal script for character Human is

which looks like an ape.

Here is my artwork,

The leftmost is the character Human, an ape. The ape gradually straightens his back until he completely straightened up in the fourth one from the left. You have seen similar diagram of "Human evolution" in museums.

However, we human have evolved further to the rightmost one. Why? Because everyone is watching his or her cell phone (Apple here is iPhone).

The diagrams of Human evolution in museums are out of date.

Pictographic Chinese Calligraphy (32) Dragon Dance - 舞龙

Dragon dance is one of the most import activity in Chinese festivals, especially Spring Festival.

The characters in this artwork are

1, The clerical script for the Dance is

The top is a man's upper body with decorations, the bottom are his two legs.

2, The small seal script for character Dragon is

The left is the head (the top) and its body (the bottom), the right is its tail.

I modified the tail to be long curly one to be more like the dragon.

Pictographic Chinese Calligraphy (31) Island - 島

The big script for character Island is

which is a Bird

on the top, and a Mountain

on the bottom.

The character means that the Island is a place where there are mountains and birds.

But where is the water? Island should be surrounded by water. The ancient Chinese didn't put water in the the character, which makes the character incomplete and imperfect.

Let me to make correction. Here is my art.

    

We know that the top one is Bird, the middle bottom one is Mountain (small script). I added two Water characters (small script), which is to complete the meaning.

There are different scripts for Water, and Mountain, let's see different combinations.

Both Mountain and Water characters above are shell bone script.

The Mountain above is shell bone script, and the characters of Water are small seal script.

Which one do you like most?

Pictographic Chinese Calligraphy (30) Ho, Ho, Ho!

The post has been collected in the book "Pictographic Chinese Calligraphy" published on Amazon as Paper book (Hardcover, and Paperback), and eBook. You could click the following link to get the information on Amazon,

Pictographic Chinese Calligraphy

Or you could search "Pictographic Chinese Calligraphy" on Amazon to find the book.

Pictographic Chinese Calligraphy (29) Fish Jump over the Dragon Gate - 鲤鱼跳龙门

There is a famous Chinese proverb: Carps Jump over the Dragon Gate, which means if the carps jumped over the dragon gate, they would become a dragon, implying success. So many Chinese people stick the painting of Carps jumping over the dragon gate on windows or doors in the new year eve to hope that they would succeed next year.

Could we create a calligraphy artwork similar to the one above with all characters? Yes.

Let's see what characters are involved in the artwork.

Door of shell bone script

.
Water of shell bone script

Fish of shell bone script

Fish of small seal script

Fish of clerical script (~ 2000 years ago - current)

Fish of standard script  (~ 1700 years ago - current), but the following is simplified character, ~ 70 years ago.

Here is my artwork: Fish jump over the Gate

When the fish jump up from the lower left over the gate to fall down on the lower right, the script changes from the oldest shell bone script on the lower left to the small seal script on the upper left to the clerical script on the upper right, and finally to standard script (simplified) on the lower right. It is a more than 3000 years across,  the Chinese culture has been connected and continuous.