Since updating my phone about 2 weeks ago, I’ve been revisiting some of the apps I downloaded before. One of them, called Tayasui Sketches, is something I had but rarely used. Of course a few years ago, I had this amazing friend who was great at drawing art, and whose skills were of course were readily do-able on an iphone, because I remember her making this amazing thing during a ride home from a party. Of course, I am nowhere as good or even half as good as what she could do, but that app stayed with me in my subconscious and going through which apps I would keep and which I wouldn’t helped resurface that memory.
So, when studying Chinese, they never really tell you how Chinese characters are crafted or inspired by real-live visualizations. Or maybe they do but I can’t remember since I was like 3 or 4 when I started learning basic Chinese. Anyway, straying from the point, there have been a couple of videos that I’ve seen of people versed in Chinese, trying to teach other people about how each character (or at least the basic structure ones) represent something in reality.
While pondering this, I decided to work on a few of my favorite or most notable Chinese characters, and how I could draw them in such a way that would present what they are, but at the same time form their Chinese character.
And so here, I have 3 characters that I decided to initially work with. Pardon my drawing skills, they are very much basic, and I have no idea how color theory works.
花 (hua): Flower
For flower, I tried to imagine what the chinese character would look like and how I could make some parts of the character look like the branches and the leaves that help complete a flower.
月 (yue): Moon
For moon, I think this was a pretty common perception of how it could turn out. I tried to imagine the Western image of the man on the moon, or a smiling moon, and used parts of the character to draw out the face and smile of the moon, while trying to retain its overall shape.
山 (shan): Mountain
For mountain, I realized later on that I made a mistake and this drawing could thus be interpreted as meaning river or stream. But originally, the word 山, which stood for mountain, really was formed from seeing three mountains or hills side by side by side. But then, I couldn’t imagine what a mountain would symbolize if I just drew three mountains, and the adult insinuations people might get from it, so I put in the three rivers flowing down the mountain to kind of form out the character.
Admittedly, I’m trying to think more of what I can do with characters, with my limited understanding of Chinese basics and all, as well as my limited drawing skills. But aside from that, this exercise is actually quite relaxing to some extent, and you’re working on something more palpable than trying to do Paint on a desktop computer….which by the way has been done by some people.
And with that, I include this short video of someone who painted the Mona Lisa using the Paint program.
