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. 

The URL for Amazing Chinese Characters will become

https://learnchinesewithfun.blogspot.com

The URL for Pictographic Chinese Calligraphy will become

https://creativechinesecalligraphy.blogspot.com

Please bookmark the above two URLs.

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

You can contact me on Facebook at: 

https://www.facebook.com/lewei.shang

if you have any problem.

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.

Pictographic Chinese Calligraphy (75) Terracotta Warriors - 兵马俑

 

Chinese call "Terracotta Warriors" as 兵马俑. 兵-Soldier, 马-Horse, 俑 - Figurine.

The characters in the artwork

1, Soldier - big seal script

The top is Axe, a weapon in ancient time. The bottom two fork alike are two hands holding the Axe. 

2, Vehicle - shell bone script

3, Horse - small seal script

4, Figurine - big seal script

The left is Person, the right is a man-made figure (big or small, pottery or porcelain)

In comparison, let's see the real Terracotta Warriors

In the picture, we only see the soldier figurines, no vehicles, because vehicles decayed, long time ago. There are some Horse figurines, but so few, and too far to see in the picture. 

The artwork shows all: soldiers, vehicles, and horses.

 

Pictographic Chinese Calligraphy (74）Cao Chong Weighs the Elephant - 曹冲称象

During 220-280, it is called Three Kingdoms Era in China. One was Wei, its King was Cao Cao. He had many sons, one was Cao Chong, who was very smart. 

When he was six years old, Sun Quan,  the King of Wu, gave an elephant to Cao Cao as a gift. Cao Cao wanted to know the weight of the elephant, he asked his ministers how to get the weight of then elephant. No on had the answer. Cao Chong, who told his father :"I know how to do it". His father let Chong say it.

Chong said:"We can lead the elephant to the board of a boat in river, and mark the watermark. We replace the elephant with stones until reaching the watermark, and we weigh the stones in batches, and add them up to get the weight of the elephant". 

Chong's amazing idea solved the problem all adults couldn't. The story became one of the most famous stories in Chinese history, now it is in school text book for all primary school students. 

Here is my artwork "Cao Chong Weighs the Elephant".

The characters in the artwork:

1, Elephant

2, Boat

3, Water