Lacquer Pups

#japaneselacquer #yearofthedog

A lovely work showing a relatively restrained usage of metallic powders and some excellent line work in the detailing of the leaves and fur with the focus on detail contrasting with the fuzzier looser patterning of the moon and foregrounds ans making full us of the black background to deepen colors and contrast. I liked the observation of detail that shows the artists had seen real puppies and wasn't just copying from a print or painting. The depiction of one puppy playing with a spring of bamboo and the other quite relaxed while scratching gives it a touch of realism that counterbalances the lushness of the gold powder and glossy black lacquer.

Kyoryusai Dog Print

There is a surprising scarity of #ukiyo-e prints showing dogs and any type of canid except foxes.
Wolves were almost extinct by the time Japanese printmaking was at its prime due to a rabies scare leading to Japanese wolves becoming over hunted and endangered and nowadays extinct!

Most of the prints I've found are of puppies but here's one of a mother with puppies which is one of a series of 12 prints by #Koryusai depicting the animals of the East Asian "Zodiac".

Not as flashy as a Hiroshige kachoga bird and flower print but quietly lovely.

TECHNOZI FANS RE Google Image Search Changes

Folks and Followers and visitors due to the changes to Google's Image Search settings there may be LESS art history posts and more technozi posts. While I can still download things to share with the non commercial setting the changes have made it much more complicated and time and data consuming to search for art.
Posting schedule may have to go back to once a week!

Those of you here for the hanzi and kanji will be happy though!

AI LUV 2018

#ai #love #valentinesday #hanzi #typography

Some East - West fusion !

I'm reworking an older design. Think I should shrink the V?

Julie Vaux work in progress copyright 2018

Year of the Dog East Meets West

A certain painter best known of his horses also created an album of dog portraits in a fusion style.
Yes I'm talking #Castiglione again ! The posture also works with the pattern of branches above and the white flowers in the foreground complement the dogs white chest patch. Ink is used to suggest shadow and form in a way compatible with Imperial Court Standards but also clearly showing Western influences.

More Year of the Dog art soon!

Subverting the Sage

SUBVERTING THE SAGE

Last post I discussed #RU a word used in modern #Chinese to describe #sages and #scholars, particularly #Confucian ones. The word seems to have originally indicated some kind of weather diviner and the change of meaning to scholar means sense when you consider how oracle bone script was used for divination and so required specialists to inscribe the characters.

However the modern form oh yeah someone may say REN includes People in general but ...

Here's RU in its modern form

REN + XU which has YU over ER

Now the next image is my creation. There is currently to my knowledge no such character in Chinese, Japanese Korean or either form of SinoVietnamese. I wish there was so I did some cut and paste and created this.

I'll be making this available on various platform sand I'll also do some colored and textured versions to place on DeviantArt and Patreon.

I'll post the links soon. 

ASIAN New Year a Reminder

#lunarnewyear #asiannewyear

The Strange Sage

#ru #sage #confucianism #hanzi #chineselanguage

Have you ever considered how strange the character for (Confucian) Sage ? Scholar is ?

Here's the modern Form

So terribly masculine Man Radical 9 plus the Weather / Rain radical over R. 126 jokingly known as the beard but functioning as a connective usually combined with other words.

Now the right hand elements of this character is the word XU in modern Pinyin which has several meanings.

Lets look at a couple of older forms ...

and a closeup of that bottom right element  ER 

People say this represents a bearded chin but I keep thinking of water flowing from a spring . Why?

Now bear in mind this is a very OLD word and its meaning could have changed over the centuries.

Lets look at the elements as ideograms rather than phonetics.

Man / person plus weather / rain plus connective/ causal conjunction

Person  needs / instructs / relationship of weather ?

Some kind of priest or weather watcher or a scribe responsible for recording and watching the weather to predict drought flood cycles? 

Remember Chinese has one of the worlds oldest writing systems.