At first glance, what do you see in the picture below?
At first you may think the picture is of two traditional Chinese paintings. However, take another look, and you’ll notice that in the painting on the right-hand side, the rainbow-colored portion looks like Chinese characters. Here’s a close up of the “rainbow characters.” They are in fact the three characters of someone’s name.
In China, artists who specialize in this type of artwork are commonly seen in parks or even on some roadsides. For only a small fee, they can turn your name into a beautiful work of art.
This kind of art is known as “花鸟字 (huā niǎo zì)” or “flower-bird characters.” Upon taking a closer look at one of these paintings, it’s easy to see where this type of art gets its name, as the strokes that make up each character are replaced with butterflies, birds, dragonflies, flowers, bamboo, and other plants and animals. Which plant or animal is chosen to represent each part of a character often depends on the meaning of the character itself or on a certain meaning that the artist or the person having the artwork done wants to convey. Let’s look at a sample of this artwork in more detail:
The characters in the sample above make up the name of the famous Ming Dynasty scholar and painter, Tang Bohu (唐伯虎). In the first character, “唐 (táng),” the “口” in the bottom part of the character is replaced by a purple lotus, which signifies that a person has high moral values. The “亻” in the second character “伯 (bó)” is represented by a crane, which indicates longevity. The final character “虎 (hǔ)” or “tiger” is drawn with a resting tiger on top of a boulder.
So how long does it take to create this piece of artwork? It might surprise you that on average, an entire painting takes only about 2-3 minutes to complete. The secret lies in the specially-made brush the artist uses, which allows more than one color to be used for each stroke. Of course, the superb skill of the artists is undoubtedly the main reason.
2 years, 6 months ago
无他，唯手熟尔。