Cool calligraphy: Zoomorphic!

 

An example of Arabic Zoomorphic calligraphy. The name says it all. I didn’t know that it was a thing in Arabic writing. I can see why, with the more free-form and less pictographic script than Chinese characters, it would become a thing, and if you google it you can find all sorts of animals scribed in Arabic. They’re fun.

I thought there would be even more zoomorphic artwork in Chinese, thinking of the character like 🐎 馬 ma, for example, but it’s not such a big thing after all. Given, I guess, that the character itself is a picture. Below is some early Chinese pictography, done on oracle bones, dating to pre-CE. I do find these attractive, the precursor to one of my favourite Chinese scripts, the Lesser Seal.

From Beyond calligraphy. Read Top>bottom, R>L