Saturday 22 September 2012

More History Zi


Can you guess what Asian languages or Sinitic dialects the other words come from? Clues in the tags!



Thursday 20 September 2012

The 3 History Jis

There are several words and characters for History in Chinese. 
Here's 3 of them that are very similar in sound although written with different characters.




What's the reason for this?
Bamboo Books! 

Well books made of long bamboo or wooden strips.


 Side bound paper books and scrolls of paper or silk were a later development.

Saturday 15 September 2012

Playing with Red 3



SVG generated in Inkscape then imported as a PNG into GIMP.


Try this technique yourself! If it proves useful and you have more luck than me selling a design please consider coming back and using the paypal to tip me?

Thursday 13 September 2012

Playing with Red 2

Another possible modification of Chi Aka .

If you havnt read the prior post I started out with a SVG generated using Unihan code entered in the Inkscape program using Control u plus the unihan plus enter.


I changed the stroke or outline to Orange and then added two filters.
The latest version on Inkscape has filters and plugins .
Now experiment yourself!



Monday 10 September 2012

Playing with Red

I've been playing with Inkscape again.

In Inkscape you can generate a character by typing Control U plus the Unihan.

I did so with the character CHI aka RED



then I converted the object to paths so I could alter the nodes and shapes.


This needs another tweaking but you can see what I'm aiming for ?

A SVG that can be turned into a jpg or png or other format and look more like brush work. And there are other things you can do once you have the SVG generated. See the next post! and oh if like me you can't afford Illustrator chekc out Inkscape an OPEN SOURCE program.

Saturday 8 September 2012

Mi Fu Calligraphy

Mi Fu was a famous Song dynasty painter but also a calligrapher.

If you've studied Chinese painting at all you've seen one of his landscapes composed of dots of rich dense dark ink .

He was also a noted calligrapher.


Here's a sample of his calligraphy to study.

Thursday 6 September 2012

SINI When Chinese meets Arabic.

Arabic is usually written with a pen and sometimes with a brush.
The Hui Muslims of China had the cultural dilemma of using and respecting both Arabic script and Chinese characters. This lead to some interesting fusions of Arabic letters with Chinese style brush work known as Sini. Enjoy my selection.