[Malachi Maloney]

HELP!

I'm working on a new painting right now and I NEED some help..

The painting is of a Japanese model, I'm making it a fantasy painting (not a pin-up necessarily) of this girl in a Japanese themed "hell" type setting. The thing is, I want to put a tattoo on her leg in some nice big fancy style Japanese letters/characters, but I can't find what the characters I need look like anywhere! I've searched the net for days, I've gone to my favorite local tattoo shop and looked through some of their books on Japanese letters, I've even contacted a total stranger over the net who does Japanese calligraphy "art pieces" for a living (he hasn't gotten back to me, so I don't think he's planning on doing so...) and I haven't been able to find squat.

So you're saying to yourself.... "just ask the model, she's Japanese". Well, I'd love to but I haven't been able to get a hold of her for days, I think she's out of town or something. Not only that, but this woman was born and raised in Okinawa, so she'd most certainly be able to help me. This is sucking royally.........

So, I'm posting this here in hopes that one of you folks will be able to lend me a hand. I wouldn't even post something like this in a forum unless I was in a total bind and seeing how this is the "Big Apple" of all art forums, more racially diverse than any other.... I figured this would be the place to ask.

If someone out there can help me, I need to know how to write "Burning Flower" in Japanese.

Any help would of course be immensely appreciated.


Thanx in advance,
Malachi
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[Matthew]

Hello
I can only do 4 chinese letters but I know that the guy on Polykarbon is
showing japanese letters and stuff, go check him out. (maybe you know the place already).
http://www.polykarbon.com

have a nice day
Matthew

[Malachi Maloney]

Thanks Matthew. Yes, I'm familiar with that site, I didn't go there to look for info yet however. I'll go check em out and see if I can come up with anything.

Thanks again.

Malachi
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[Matthew]

I can understand your frustration, I made a bit of searching for the exact words but could just find some english - japanese lexikon�s that just contained some basic words...hehe..crazy. Could�nt find the words on Polykarbon either.

good luck and have a nice day
Matthew

[gezstar]

what's up. i'm half-japanese, so i thought i'd help out a fellow artist

OK, here is the japanese for 'burning flower':



it says: 'moeru (burn) hana (flower)'. the two big characters are 'kanji' (characters of chinese origin), and the small ones in between are 'hiragana' (simple japanese alphabet).

obviously, you might want to write them a bit cooler-looking than that - my writing's pretty rough. if you get the japanese script add-on for windows, and type in 'moeru hana', it should give you a nice font version.

anyways, hope that's what you were looking for

[Malachi Maloney]

gezstar~ YES PERFECT, exactly what I was looking for! Thank you so much!

If you'd like a signed print of the finished painting, e-mail me with your mailing address and I'll send one out to you gratis.

Take it easy,
Malachi
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[Matthew]

that is cool, I was wondering with the japanese signs.
With each sign, Do you start downward and up or upward and down?

Matthew

[Blind Tree Frog]

Top to Bottom and Left to Right

[Sumaleth]

What it really says is "your mother is a babe".
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Art Links Archive -- Artists and Tutorials

[zak]

or worse even "in reality im a 51 year old guy that had a sex change"

[gezstar]

Malachi, you're welcome! I'm glad I could help.

I only became acquainted with your work recently, and I'm a big fan, so imagine how pleased I am that you'd offer to send me a print... it's really kind of you. Good luck with the pic

Come on, Sumaleth, we all know "your mother is a babe" is MILF in any language

[Matthew]

Hmmm

[Matthew]

[Malachi Maloney]

[Blind Tree Frog]

[Matthew]

ok thank you.

Matthew

[Rat]

Innit top to bottom and right to left? So you go the opposite direction as you would in English? At least that's how my Japanese teacher told us...
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~Gio

afterglow

[Blind Tree Frog]

That's how you read, but not how you write. Reading goes from Top Right to Bottom Left (t 2 b, r 2 l). But when you write the characters it's t2b,l2r. And the order in which you draw the strokes (and how you draw the strokes) is very important. Although for a tatoo, it won't matter so much as the brush strokes aren't visible like with a callig. brush.

http://members.aol.com/rtdrpt/kanji/writutor.htm This has a thing showing how the strokes go. There is something odd about the middle verticle line on some kanji, but i can't remember the rule.

[Matthew]

So you read the opposite way, cool
I asked Chiani and she told me it goes all the same way with both Korean, chinese and japan when you write.
Top to bottom left to right.

Matthew

[Rat]

I write it the other way when we have to do vertical. Oh well. *shrug*
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~Gio

afterglow

[plastikman]

here..i have it for you sorry for my sloppy writing but i hope you can make it out ^_^

[Malachi Maloney]

Thanks plastikman. You and gezstar's letters are totally different.....

Who's are correct?! Can anyone help me choose the right letters?!

Crap, just when I thought I had the proper references for these letters, someone comes along and offers me different ones. Not that that's bad mind ya, I just need to know which ones are correct.



~M~
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[Xyster21]

Actually the characters look the same (roughly)
the only difference is plastikman left out (I think heh) the 'hiragana' (simple japanese alphabet). But the characters displaying burning and flower look the same from both the both of them. I guess it's just like in English cursive... everyone has a different style of writing letters/words etc... but all in all each letter has the same amount of lines/strokes/or what have you and are similarly put.... like plastikman said

[Malachi Maloney]

So should I leave the hiragana out then?


~M~
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[Matthew]

gezstar mentioned something about japanese script add-on, does not that give you the right signs?

Matthew

[gezstar]

whassup. Malachi don't worry you can stick with the references I gave you - plastikman's version of burning (yakedo) refers to a medical burn/scald, like "i burnt myself cooking dinner". "moeru", which is what i put in the original post, is more to do with the flames of love/passion or the flames of a fire - which i assumed was the meaning you were looking for.

plus, "yakedo hana" doesn't actually make sense and suggests to me that he looked up the word for "burning", then the word for "hana", and stuck them together. no offense, plastikman

Gez

[Malachi Maloney]

Word.

Thanks for explaining the actual meanings of the individual characters to me, gez. Very helpful and much appreciated.

Xyster21, plastikman, Matthew, thanks for the help folks.


~Malachi

Ps. I'll post the letters after I paint them, so you guys can tell me whether they look right or not before I put them on the girl.
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[gezstar]

you're welcome man. like i said before, i'd recommend looking for examples of calligraphy on the net as a ref rather than relying on the scan - kanji can be difficult to do right... Take it easy
Gez