Is this calligraphy odd/trash or it can pass?

[Number99]

4 hours ago, Sara Lee said:

Do you mean that there are mistakes in the columns? Can I ask you to point them?

Oh…That's not your work, but I assume that's what happens when it becomes common practice to display in cursive that people can't read just because it's cool.

Note that I have listed "in real life outside of calligraphy" in my reference.

That does not apply to your work, as it is a work of art and is displayed in a private room.

It would be more natural for you to answer when asked rather than writing a translation next to it.

 

 

[Shanghai Knife Dude]

1 hour ago, Sara Lee said:

I'm trying to learn more about this, but I can't really see the difference with a true calligraphy work. Now that I know the existence of "jianghu style", everything I see online it looks "jianghu style" to me ahah 💔

How can I spot the difference between the two?

NB: There's another thing that I don't understand. Is it consider to be totally trashy and obnoxious or do you still appreciate the beauty, like "pretty but dumb"? It's like "Comics Sans" font for us (used by downtown churches or school teachers with no sense of aesthetic) or more like a, I don't know, graffiti or gothic font (cool for artworks, but sometimes a little yokel for tattoos)?

Let me put it in a more polite way: if someone with sound calligraphy background, seeing a Jianghu Style hanging in your place, he/she would:

1.praise your work, entirely out of courtesy. 

2.you have managed to display your understanding of calligraphy, so, he/she will try to avoid any further topic of calligraphy with you. 

3.yes, graffiti, under contemporary art, not under realm of any calligraphy.

 

As I mentioned above, Chinese cursive is a relatively niche, high end, closed system. Only people with ad hoc purpose is still adopting this font, e.g. Open calligraphy competition. 

 

My advice will be do your own research, get material from reliable source, e.g.  Harvard Chinese Center, etc. 

 

Once you are 100% familiar with Bach, anything non-Bach just display themself. That's the way to tell a Jianghu Style.

[Sara Lee]

35 minutes ago, Number99 said:

Oh…That's not your work, but I assume that's what happens when it becomes common practice to display in cursive that people can't read just because it's cool.

Note that I have listed "in real life outside of calligraphy" in my reference.

That does not apply to your work, as it is a work of art and is displayed in a private room.

It would be more natural for you to answer when asked rather than writing a translation next to it.

 

 

Thank you so much, I think I understand what you say.
So sth like this would be " "cultural (bleep)" ":



But sth like this would be better, just the same, or worse? 



And there is no scenario where this could work as a tattoo, right?

[Number99]

1 hour ago, Sara Lee said:

Thank you so much, I think I understand what you say.
So sth like this would be " "cultural (bleep)" ":



But sth like this would be better, just the same, or worse? 



And there is no scenario where this could work as a tattoo, right?

I am in Japan and from the perspective of the Chinese cultural sphere, I am a foreigner just like you. I would actually consider whether quoting Li Bai's poem as a tattoo falls under respect or not.

 

In Northeast Asia, the penalty of "ink punishment" 墨刑 was adopted until the beginning of the last century. It is only recently that tattoo culture has been discussed as a right in this region, so there are still many people who are afraid of tattoos because they perceive them as intimidation.

 

I think it should also be considered that there are people who have a fearful and inappropriate image of tattoos as mafia.

I would think that even if you respect Li Bai, it could be taken to mean the opposite.

In that case, the font is irrelevant.

 

This is the first time I have seen cursive characters in a font.

Writing styles are written consecutively, maintaining the continuity of the letters, so the letters before and after affect the shape.

I am not a writer so @Shanghai Knife Dude should know more about this.

In other words, handwritten letters are not written in the same shape every time, so the font looks unnatural.

Picture the English writing system printed one by one in pieces.

 

P.S.

I wrote this in a hurry, so please point out any inappropriate translations.

 

Edited June 6 by Number99

[A Smug Dill]

18 hours ago, Number99 said:

Using cursive (草书 草書) in real life outside of calligraphy in a Hanzi Culture Area is more dangerous than writing in a foreign language.

Even if one writes a small translation, I believe that the writer will have to take responsibility for any accidents that occur due to misreading.

Personally, I hope that the practice will not spread before accidents resulting in loss of life occur.

 

1 hour ago, Number99 said:

Is it so funny that people die? …

 

I thought you were referring to the, ”No no, I didn't mean your mother is a… *Kapow!*” kinda accident. Or someone getting a ‘cool’ hanzi tattoo that in fact reads, “Kick me!” and then gets kicked as invited, or the bearer does the kicking taking revenge on the tattooist. Slapstick comedy stuff.

[A Smug Dill]

1 hour ago, Sara Lee said:

But sth like this would be better, just the same, or worse? 

 

Worse. No one in their right mind would tattoo or display three-quarters of an well-known ancient poem but leave out the last line, unless it is something of a clue or plot point in an Agatha Christie whodunnit mystery.

[Number99]

 

24 minutes ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

 

I thought you were referring to the, ”No no, I didn't mean your mother is a… *Kapow!*” kinda accident. Or someone getting a ‘cool’ hanzi tattoo that in fact reads, “Kick me!” and then gets kicked as invited, or the bearer does the kicking taking revenge on the tattooist. Slapstick comedy stuff.

Kapow!…?

🤣

The tattoo was not yet finalized at that time.

I didn't explain it because I thought it would be understandable, but I assumed an extreme example would be if the patient's name was accidentally printed on a hospital medicine bag in a cursive font that could be readable, but not...

😅

 

 

Edited June 6 by Number99

[Sara Lee]

2 hours ago, Shanghai Knife Dude said:

As I mentioned above, Chinese cursive is a relatively niche, high end, closed system. Only people with ad hoc purpose is still adopting this font, e.g. Open calligraphy competition. 

 

My advice will be do your own research, get material from reliable source, e.g.  Harvard Chinese Center, etc. 

Thank you very much, I will certainly do as you suggest. Can I ask you if you may know more sources? Or even if you can link some images of good calligraphy, according to you?

[Sara Lee]

1 hour ago, A Smug Dill said:

I thought you were referring to the, ”No no, I didn't mean your mother is a… *Kapow!*” kinda accident. Or someone getting a ‘cool’ hanzi tattoo that in fact reads, “Kick me!” and then gets kicked as invited, or the bearer does the kicking taking revenge on the tattooist. Slapstick comedy stuff.

 I imagined quite the same things as you, but I still laughed so much at this ahah

 

1 hour ago, A Smug Dill said:

Worse. No one in their right mind would tattoo or display three-quarters of an well-known ancient poem but leave out the last line, unless it is something of a clue or plot point in an Agatha Christie whodunnit mystery.

Got it (and solved it?)
 

[Sara Lee]

1 hour ago, Number99 said:

Picture the English writing system printed one by one in pieces.

 

Thank you so much, so interesting and exhaustive!

I just don't get this single example, what do you mean? 
Something like this?

[Shanghai Knife Dude]

18 minutes ago, Sara Lee said:

Thank you so much, so interesting and exhaustive!

I just don't get this single example, what do you mean? 
Something like this?

I totally agree with what @Number99 said. He briefly touched some key merits of Chinese calligraphy. Of course, Japanese 三笔三迹 work of calligraphy is one of the tops in history we shall all admire and learn from. I used to practice 三笔三迹, to get some smell of 唐. But I am not that talent in this sense, I have been stumbling all way through. 

 

Chinese Calligraphy, as a subject on itself, is something you could get a PHD from. There are history, theory, historic criticism, whole loads to occupied for 7 years full time in academic, if you lucky. 

 

I believe there are some sources in English on Internet. I am sure. I can't even get around with the offline materials in Chinese. 

 

I could post some cursive examples once i got access to a proper PC. I am on phone now.

[2ouvenir]

Just passing by. If you want more information on this poem, see here.

 

If this were my passion project, I'd totally have this poem in small seal script. (李白 Li Bai's poems have been scribed in this script before, so it wouldn't be a novel thing to do.)

 

A little taster of what I would do:

To do the whole poem would take quite a bit of time and effort, digitally or otherwise, but I can do it within a weekend if I were motivated (I am not, and I already have a lot of other ancient Chinese texts lined up that will take up bulk of my weekends). I can teach you briefly how one would do it digitally if you PM me. (Edit: Lost all interest since this is potentially a tattoo.) If done properly in this way (I'd probably use ~25% less spacing between characters [referring to the above calligraphy in this post] if I am fitting ten characters per line), it will be aesthetically pleasing and probably surpass much of what you will be able to find online.

 

Everyone has different tastes. Regarding OP's posted calligraphy so far, I personally would omit the distracting border and seemingly random seal stamp, they add no value to the poem. Also, I would not bold or use a different script for the first line, I see absolutely no point in doing this. Either, just use the first line, or if you are going to use the whole poem, consistently use the same script and size for the whole poem. As for the scripts used, I don't like any of them.

 

Sorry if this sounds harsh, @Sara Lee, this is totally just my opinion, as is everyone else's. Nobody should have authority over things like this. This is not a logic or mathematical problem where there is usually a correct answer so it will be in our best interests to not dwell too much on this, especially since we are just digitally rendering the poem, akin to creating a MIDI file for a music piece, not actually playing the piece. But to put out more of my opinion, I think what can drastically improve the calligraphy with minimal effort would be to get rid of the frilly design and change the first line into the same script and size as the rest of the poem.

 

Edit: I just read through the thread a little bit more and found out that this would potentially be used for a tattoo. I initially thought this would just be used as a poster in a room... Um... yeah. Do what you want in that case.

[Sara Lee]

15 hours ago, Shanghai Knife Dude said:

I totally agree with what @Number99 said. He briefly touched some key merits of Chinese calligraphy. Of course, Japanese 三笔三迹 work of calligraphy is one of the tops in history we shall all admire and learn from. I used to practice 三笔三迹, to get some smell of 唐. But I am not that talent in this sense, I have been stumbling all way through. 

 

Chinese Calligraphy, as a subject on itself, is something you could get a PHD from. There are history, theory, historic criticism, whole loads to occupied for 7 years full time in academic, if you lucky. 

 

I believe there are some sources in English on Internet. I am sure. I can't even get around with the offline materials in Chinese. 

 

I could post some cursive examples once i got access to a proper PC. I am on phone now.

Could I consider it as an ancient version of the modern language that now only few can understand? Like writing in English, but pretending that in 1600 a.D. they used different characters as well as different words? 

Oh, when you're comfortable I would love to see some examples, thank you so much!

[A Smug Dill]

41 minutes ago, Sara Lee said:

Could I consider it as an ancient version of the modern language that now only few can understand?

 

There's a difference between form and expression. Writing in a different script is a matter of form, even if the content is phrased in modern language; readers may struggle to associate the glyphs with words they know. Whereas Confucius' The Analects, and moreso the Buddhist Heart Sutra, is incomprehensible to most people even if the words are presented in easily recognisable kaishu script.

 

I was just looking into Greensleeves an hour ago, and this looked strange to me, even if presented in Times New Roman or Courier New font:

Alas my loue, ye do me wrong,

to cast me off discurteously

And I haue loued you for so long,

Delighting in your companie.

 

That's a matter of using ye olde English, as opposed to some barely recognisable font, typeface, or script to write, “Happy Birthday to you.”

[Sara Lee]

12 minutes ago, A Smug Dill said:

There's a difference between form and expression. Writing in a different script is a matter of form, even if the content is phrased in modern language; readers may struggle to associate the glyphs with words they know. Whereas Confucius' The Analects, and moreso the Buddhist Heart Sutra, is incomprehensible to most people even if the words are presented in easily recognisable kaishu script.

You're right, I got the difference between the two, it was just an attempt of mine to translate this concept in my culture. 

It maybe would be better to compare the calligraphy to the medieval miniatures made by monks, which were real form of art, so beautiful, but they were used just for the initials and literally everyone can read it. Plus, there are quite no rules as well you can understand them, you just have to be good at drawing.

Even 1800 calligraphy, which is difficult to read for the most of us, doesn't request any documentation to be imitated.

Our only delicate and complex topic, which you could spend your life studying it, is the story of the language itself I guess. 

[Sara Lee]

39 minutes ago, A Smug Dill said:

That's a matter of using ye olde English, as opposed to some barely recognisable font, typeface, or script to write, “Happy Birthday to you.”

Yes, that's exactly what I wanted to say!

(I feel the duty to say that I'm Italian living in Italy, not a native English. I understand everything and I hope you can understand me, but I also hope you're not relying on my grammar)

[A Smug Dill]

.

[Number99]

20 hours ago, Sara Lee said:

Thank you so much, so interesting and exhaustive!

I just don't get this single example, what do you mean? 
Something like this?

That is what I wanted to tell you.

In addition to this unnaturalness, there remains the problem that the writing style is almost unreadable to the viewer.

But the debate is already underway, and it seems the answer has already been obtained.

[Sara Lee]

7 minutes ago, Number99 said:

But the debate is already underway, and it seems the answer has already been obtained.

Yes indeed, I just wanted to see it without my cultural filter.
Thank you all for everything you've taught me 🙏

[Shanghai Knife Dude]

5 hours ago, Sara Lee said:

Could I consider it as an ancient version of the modern language that now only few can understand? Like writing in English, but pretending that in 1600 a.D. they used different characters as well as different words? 

Oh, when you're comfortable I would love to see some examples, thank you so much!

Google:

1.三笔三迹(Japanese well put Chinese cursive into practice)

2.黄庭坚草书

Then you will see what Bach is about. 

 

Language is a bigger scope, grammar+phase+character. It's only character being discussed here. 

 

You Italian? super. Then you can feel me exactly the way when there is a pine apple pizza in front of you.