1.5 Creating the ideocalligraphs

I started learning how to use ideocalligraphs through the long process of creating them.

Each ideocalligraph would start life as an idea or visual intention. From the first drafts I chose what seemed the best and then wrote it out, many tens of times, before the ideocalligraph leapt into life with its correct stroke sequence. At that moment I knew, visually and through the hand, that I had 'got it'.

Each radical ideocalligraph should be as simple and explicit as possible. With composite ideocalligraphs I aim at an integrity of line between the forms of the two or more radicals brought together. Their meanings are then easier to grasp and memorize. With their longer stroke sequences and imbedded meanings they were at times quite as difficult to 'construct' as their radical ideocalligraphs had been.

The long list of influences on their design and development includes Chinese and Japanese characters, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Maya glyphs, Native American pictograms and designs scratched, carved or painted on artefacts from many past and present civilizations.

There is a selected range of mathematical and other symbols which belong in ideocalligraphy. They can on occasion provide telling links between loose groupings.

The earliest attempts at formulating messages or small parcels of thought were simple and mostly linear in format. But the more I put the ideocalligraphs to work, the more I found to express with them.

When I began juxtaposing ideocalligraphs  the 'inner speech' present within them came alive and appeared on occasion as a seamless flow of wordless meaning. Ideocalligraphy was becoming what I had felt the need to create. An evolutionary or refining process got underway. In response to an appropriate challenge, a novel ideocalligraphic solution would present itself, remaining 'high-lighted' in the mind for future use.

Apparent slips when using ideocalligraphy can on occasion lead to enhanced meaning. It is as if hidden meaning guides one's hand!