剪纸的照片编辑完了。祝大家除夕快乐！

Have finished editing the papercut photos. Happy New Year's Eve to all who celebrate!


#MastoArt #Cat #Cats #ChinesePapercut #Papercutting #CNY #ChineseNewYear #剪纸 #YearOfTheRabbit #YearOfTheCat #耄耋图 #猫蝶兔 #兔兔高升 #招福猫

猫蝶兔 - 耄耋图
Cat (māo) Butterfly (dié) Rabbit (tù) - Octogenarian (mào) Nonagenarian (dié) Painting (tú)

《耄耋图》是明代的一副水墨画，图绘一猫仰头望着飞行中的蝴蝶。因为“猫蝶”与“耄耋”（八十多岁九十多岁的老年人）谐音，此图含有长寿的吉祥寓意。那“猫”和“蝶”加上一个“兔”谐音就变得更完美啦！作品中的两只花猫就是住在我们后院的两只小猫咪，Tau Huay （豆花）和 Tau Suan （豆爽）:D（图二）

The "Octogenarian Nonagenarian Painting" is a Ming dynasty Chinese painting depicting a black cat keenly eyeing a butterfly in mid-flight. The Mandarin words for "cat" and "butterfly" happen to be homonymous with the uncommon words for "octogenarian" and "nonagenarian", respectively. The piece thus carries a metaphorical blessing of longevity.

Adding a "rabbit" to the mix perfects the pun, since the Mandarin word for "rabbit" (tù) is also homonymous with the word for "painting" (tú)! The two cats depicted in this papercut are our resident garden kittens, Tau Huay (soya beancurd) and Tau Suan (mung bean dessert) :D (in the second pic)

*pats self of back: Good pun, good pun*

#MastoArt #Cat #Cats #CatsOfPixelfed #CatsOfMastodon #ChinesePapercut #Papercutting #CNY #ChineseNewYear #剪纸 #YearOfTheRabbit #YearOfTheCat #耄耋图 #猫蝶兔

招福猫！(来自日语的「招き猫」通常被译为"招财猫“，但我比较喜欢“招福猫“的意思）
Fortune-beckoning Cat (from the Japanese "Maneki Neko")

招财猫总是白色的猫，而我们家Bei Bei (福建话：白白）恰好就是一只白猫。这对剪纸就是Bei Bei的“剪纸肖像”，Bei Bei 是我们的招福猫！😺

The fortune cat figurine from Japan is usually a white cat, and so is our cat Bei Bei :D This is a "papercut portrait" of Bei Bei - she's our fortune beckoning cat!

#MastoArt #Cat #Cats #CatsOfPixelfed #CatsOfMastodon #ChinesePapercut #Papercutting #CNY #ChineseNewYear #剪纸 #YearOfTheRabbit #YearOfTheCat #招福猫 #招财猫

兔兔高升！
On the up and up with every rabbit!

这是我“十二生肖之墙”的最新作品。从2020鼠年开始我每年换剪纸的时候会在沿着楼梯的墙壁上留下一张，希望2032年就能看到十二生肖的每一只动物爬上楼梯 :P

This is the latest addition to my growing "Zodiac Wall", which I started in 2020 with the Year of the Rat. I leave one animal papercut up each year when switching out my papercuts for the new year, so by 2023 we'll hopefully have the full zodiac crawling up our stairs :P

(Last pic here: https://pixelfed.social/i/web/post/467594411202862389）

Title of the piece is a pun on the auspicious phrase 步步高升 (bù bù gāo shēng), which means to be on the up and up with every step, playing on the similar sounds of the word for rabbit, 兔 (tù), and step, 步 (bù). It's also the name of a popular Cantonese folk music piece often played during Chinese New Year that I really like.

(A tangentially-related note: my brain produced the thought that it must be pretty hard to make good Dad jokes in Chinese languages since punning on homonyms is such a common practice)

#MastoArt #Cat #Cats #ChinesePapercut #Papercutting #CNY #ChineseNewYear #剪纸 #WIP #YearOfTheRabbit #YearOfTheCat #兔兔高升

玉兔迎春入、花猫接春来
The Jade Rabbit welcomes Spring, and the Tabby Cat ushers it in
("Tabby Cat" is literally "Flower Cat" in the Mandarin, which is nice, since the cat here is a flower tabby!)

在越南的十二生肖之中兔子被猫取代了。我不是越南人，可一旦有借口多画几只猫我当然要画啦！家里一只白猫，后院三只花猫，小区里好多只流浪猫，多贴一些猫咪剪纸，愿我们年年有猫陪伴！

In Vietnam, the Cat takes the place of the Rabbit in the zodiac. I'm not Vietnamese, but I'm always happy to have an excuse to draw #MoarCats. A white cat in the house, three tabby cats in the backyard, and plenty of stray cats running around the neighbourhoodd (which we TNR) - I think that's a pretty legit reason to paste cat (and rabbit) papercuts around the house so we can have #MoarCats!

#MastoArt #Cat #Cats #ChinesePapercut #Papercutting #CNY #ChineseNewYear #剪纸 #WIP #YearOfTheRabbit #YearOfTheCat

这次农历新年真的来得太早了 T_T 赶着把剪纸做好……

Less than a week to Chinese New Year 😱 And the papercuting begins.


#MastoArt #ChinesePapercut #Papercutting #CNY #ChineseNewYear #剪纸 #WIP #YearOfTheRabbit #YearOfTheCat

Chinese papercuts for this year (2022), The Year of the Tiger. Cutting words are the hardest as I have to draw their mirror-image on the back of the paper (I should use stencils next time probably, the words are the poorest part of the first piece). Anyway the phrase (虎福临门 Hu Fu Lin Men) means "May the Tiger's prosperity arrive at your door" (a play on the more common phrase “may the five prosperities arrive at your door")

虎年的剪纸作品

#MastoArt #ChinesePapercut #Papercutting #CNY #ChineseNewYear #剪纸

I didn't seem to take proper photos of my papercuts from 2021, the Year of the Ox, so I only have two presentable ones.

The second is my growing zodiac wall.

牛年的剪纸作品。

#MastoArt #ChinesePapercut #Papercutting #CNY #ChineseNewYear #剪纸

Since the last piece I posted was inspired by the design language of traditional Chinese papercuts, here are some of my papercuts for the Year of the Rat. I've been doing these zodiac papercuts every Chinese New Year since 2020, which was the Year of the Rat and the start of a new cycle (a pretty dismal cycle so far though, and perhaps with some predictive value - the Rat and the Tiger are generally deemed inauspicious).

I leave one of these on the wall every year, so if I can keep this up till 2032 I will have 12 animals climbing along my wall by then :P

鼠年的剪纸作品。

#MastoArt #ChinesePapercut #Papercutting #CNY #ChineseNewYear #剪纸

This was yet another piece I created for the SVS Critique Arena Challenge for the month of July, based on the prompt "Rabbit Road Race", and is again based on Chinese mythology, this time on the commonly-told folktale about the race organized by the Heavenly Jade Emperor to determine the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac, which are also shared widely by other Asian cultures.

I was again trying out an experimental style with this, trying to do something flatter, and more textured, while weaving in traditional Chinese papercut motifs. It was also quite an ambitious piece in terms of composition and design, as I had to fit in all 12 animals and their respective story texts in a convincing but not overly-cluttered manner.

另一个为7月的 SVS Critique Arena Challenge 所创作的作品，命题为Rabbit Road Race，以十二生肖的故事为灵感。十二生肖刚好有个兔子，而十二生肖赛跑又是个很流行的传说，总之觉得这题材很适合。我又在尝试一个不同的画风，试图将剪纸的艺术语言融入动物们的设计和渲染方式。从构图和设计的方面来说，这也是挺复杂的一个绘画，因为我必须把统统12只动物摆在同一个画面里，也必须将故事文字适当地融入绘图。

Painted in #krita

#MastoArt #DigitalPainting #Zodiac #ChinesePaperCut