The president reserves the right for the final chop at his own time and discretion. The methods used in making chops depends on the hardness of the material being carved and the personal preference of the artist. The chop is at once an object of art, used in artwork, and the making of a chop is an art in itself. Chops may be used to express a poetic thought or statement. Like haiku poetry, which is limited to 17 syllables, the maker of a seal is often limited in expressing his ideas by some three to five characters that can be squeezed into the space of the chop.
Painters also use the chop as their artistic signature.
After the Sung dynasty it became customary for artists to sign their works with both a calligraphic statement and their chop. A good painting could be enhanced by the right chop stamped in the right place. Currently, one of the most prominent artistic chop makers in Taiwan is Hsueh Ping-nan, a man who had started out as a mechanical engineer and later went into gymnastics and the decathlon before he was introduced to calligraphy and the artistic world. From calligraphy he progressed into chop making, and since then his life has been dedicated to that pursuit. He studied under the master Li Pu-tung, then later quit his job to study and research art when he made his final breakthrough.