STUDY HOW JAKUCHU DEPICTS BIRDS

 #Itojakuchu #birds #rooster #painting 

I have posted this one before and I'm reposting it as an example of bird painting for the benefit if they will pay attention of the sort of anime / manga artist who apparently thinks wings and feathers are made of cardboard and anime means they don't have to study anatomy or other artists.

Also it is nearly Spring and there are flowers in this painting!

I certainly don't want to you all to be as fascinated or possibly obsessed with birds as Jakuchu was but whatever your art style he is a master you should study whether you are doing anime/ manga or  scientific illustration or whatever. Linework color layout composition this is a masterpiece. Study it! 

OGATA GEKKO PRINT

 Ogata Gekko - The Grass Cutting Blade 

#ogatagekko #japaneseprint #

 

This is an illustration of a famous scene from Japanese legends. NO not a Kabuki play. Note that the artist has depicted the character in pre HEIAN costume with loose sleeves pants bound at the calf and a STRAIGHT not curved katana! Also the wearing of jewellery made of stone beads and the use of a belt with the swords sheath tied to the belt.

Note also the use of gray as a dominant color both complementing and contrasting the reds pinks and other tints hues and tones. Its almost painterly but still a print respecting the artists sketches and color notes and skilfully rendering them. 

Remember this print was made by having several super imposed woodblock.

One for the black lines one for the grays another for each other color.

If using digital art we might use gradients plus vector objects and layers with varying degrees of opacity. 

Consider how you might create a similar image using a marker pen or brush or a tablet and a digital pen?

Hiroshige - HIRASAN

 HIROSHIGE - HIRASAN 

HIRASAN is a range of mountains north east of the Kyoto basin now known for a scenic drive and ski fields. Snow on these peaks is one of the Eight Views of OMI?

Once again Hiroshige shows his mastery of color and tone. There are only two colors used black and blue but every raised surface on the block that impressed ink onto the paper renders shadow and shape and the colorist has carefully tinted the block to reflect the tones of a whatever watercolor sketch Hiroshige sent them.

I have no idea what village that is in the foreground probably judging from the angle somewhere north of Otsu that is now a suburb of that city.

And theres the contrast creating depth between the line work in the foreground of trees houses people and the nearest slopes and raising up so high just a shape with no outline just whiteness raising against a gray wintery sky.

HIROSHIGE 

truly one of the greats!

Writing English with Chinese characters?

Okay for some reason this is massively trending over on Quora along with related questions on using Chinese characters to write a variety of other languages.

Its an interesting question.

One could write rain will come with characters like yu lai 

BUT 

What if you want to write :

It should begin to rain soon.

Conditionals cause problems.

Japanese solved this by using kana to render verb suffixes.

Modern Chinese uses adverbs.

You could do this using hanzi but you would have to know both English and Chinese very well?

And what about imbedded clauses? 

 I could not meet you because (of) (the) heavy rain (which was) causing flooding (that was) blocking (the) road.

You could make this one line of writing using hanzi but you might need at least 2 or 3 extra characters to express could and other conditions even if you omitted the words I placed in brackets.

Then theres the definite article THE ! There's just no hanzi parallel unless you change every usage of THE to this or that ? 

How also does one express the difference between a base or infinite verb form and -ed  or -ing whether they are expressing aspect or tense? 

As an exercise to improve translation skills and make students think about thee different grammar of both laguages it could be useful but it completely omits euphony rhythm emotional tone and other aspects.

Could you use hanzi to write English or Vietnamese or Arabic or Japanese or Uighur. 

It could be done but it generally requires extra characters or special signs to be efficient or effectively. Look at Japanese kana. Oh wait that requires far longer to learn? 

Alphabetic systems have undeniable advantages ! 

Mountains - Tateyama

#mountains #tateyama #Hiroshige #japaneseprint

Having shown you a Chinese #shansui #landscape last time this time one of Hiroshige's lesser known print. There is some exaggeration or perhaps erosion since the late 18th century? but yes Tateyama is not so much one mountain as several peaks grouped together. The mist and fog in the foreground are rising from a lake and the local climate and geography is such that there are lush forests raising from flat bottomed valleys almost subtropical yet small glaciers and snow and alpine habitats around the peaks! And the famous snow corridor!