Chinese Calligraphy History (1) Uncover the beauty of the Chinese picto-calligraphy

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1, Traditional Chinese Calligraphy emphasizes the beauty of neatly arranged many characters, or the elegant cursive style with multiple characters. 

Chinese Calligraphy has more than 3000 years old. Many Chinese characters were pictogram, picture-alike. Many are still pictogram, but many have changed to become non-pictogram. 

Chinese Calligraphy is a combination of language and art at the beginning, but as time past, the picture-alike curves of characters evolved to straight lines to avoid confusion as a role of language, the beauty of art has been hided.  It is more difficult for people to see the beauty of Chinese Calligraphy as individual characters. Traditional Chinese calligraphy emphasizes heavily on the beauty from the neatly arranged multiple characters in standard script or clerical script, or the running script or cursive script in more flexible order, not the beauty of the individual pictograph.

- Yi Ying Monument, Han Dynasty (202 B. C - 220), Clerical script

- Lan Ting Xu, Jin Dynasty (226-420), Running Script

2, Uncover the beauty of the Chinese picto-calligraphy

It is a big missing or incomplete for Chinese calligraph without the beauty of the individual pictograph. Because the pictograph was the ancient Chinese orinigal way to discribe the world they thought. The individual character contains their philosophy. But if we write too many of the characters together, we can't not see these any more.

In order to uncover the beauty of the Chinese characters, I have explored back to original Chinese character expressions, tried to emphasize the picture-alike of the characters to restore the original pictogram. At the same time, I tried to modify some pictograph or non-pictograph characters to create meaningful new pictogram for a new impression of the characters. My goal is to make Chinese characters easy to understood, not only the Chinese can appreciate, but the non Chinese speakers could enjoy. 

Mountain, (Written by Lewei Shang), from top to bottom: Shell-Bone script, Small seal Script, Clerical Script.
Note: Shell-Bone Script is the oldest script, popular in 3000-4000 years ago, Small seal script was popular in 2000 - 2500 years ago, Clerical Script was popular in 2000 years ago, but it is still used widely nowadays. 

Fish, (Written by Lewei Shang), from top to bottom: Shell-Bone script, Small Script, Clerical Script.

to be continued

Note: Update information

1, Amazing Chinese Characters blog has changed name to Learn Chinese with Pictography, and changed its URL address too, the new URL is

Learn Chinese with Pictography.blogspot.com/

2, Pictographic Chinese Calligraphy blog has changed name to Chinese Pictographic Calligraphy, and the new URL is

Chinese Pictographic Calligraphy.blogspot.com/

You are welcome to access the new sites for Chinese learning. Please update your bookmarks.