Art stencil

[astrid]

Hi everybody,

 

I got a 'asian art' stencil and I'm curious about if these are chinese characters and what they mean. I'd be grateful for any help.

 

Kind regards,

Astrid

 

[Shelley]

Closest I can get is dong 東 jing 京。 It means Tokyo (eastern capitol)

 

I think the single stroke near the top character needs to be closer to the bottom one or else I can't make sense of it.

 

I would use it facing the other way so the bottom character faces the same way as the one I typed. (the little "flick" at the bottom of the middle stroke should face to the left).

 

Hope this helps.

[Kobo-Daishi]

I'd agree with Shelly.

 

It looks like a mirror image of 東京 (or "eastern capitol" which nowadays, largely, refers to Tokyo).

 

And the "lid" bit from the second character is too close to the top character.

 

Kobo.
 

[astrid]

So it's mirrored and jing's top stroke has gotten connected to dong. That's really good to know before I use it =)

I know that since this is a german art stencil and they've mixed all kinds of characters and symbols here, the characters might not be Chinese, so I'm sorry if I couldn't tell the difference, and I really appreciated your help. Thank you.

 

Follow up question: since the 'tokyo' characters were mirrored, does that mean that the rest of the characters here are mirrored? And what does the character under 'ohm' mean?

http://www.eskiss972.com/1209-large_default/ckreul-home-design-stencil-motif-stencil-asian-art-48204.jpg

 

 

[Shelley]

No the others are the correct orientation. The character under the ohm is fu 福 meaning good fortune, happiness or luck. This is used a lot in Chinese art. the one next to it is ai 愛 (traditional form) meaning love

 

IMHO the ai 愛 is the more attractive of the 4 characters, the other 3 look a bit chunky but that might just be because they are stencils and this does make them look odd till it is actually used and the end result may well look fine.

[Lu]

That 福 looks rather off. Strictly speaking it's not quite wrong, but it looks ugly to the point of looking wrong. I agree with Shelley that 爱 looks alright. The buddha and yin-yang images are alright too. I don't know anything about how to write Aum/Ohm but that one doesn't look entirely correct to me either.

 

The idea of that stencil is cool, but use with caution.

[astrid]

Thank you for your input, it's been awesomely helpful. I will definitely use the stencil with caution.

[Shelley]

Maybe you could post a picture of what you do with them? It might be fun to see what you create.