ITO JAKUCHU - PLUMS AND CRANES

 ITO JAKUCHU PLUMS AND CRANES

Plums are a traditional symbol of winter 

Perhaps someone was feeding cranes as pets in a garden ? 

Giving Ito the idea for this work?

Shigenobu - Lady and Plum Trees

#Shigenobu #plumtrees #surimono #Japaneseprint

To Farewell Plum Season here's a #Shigenobu Print.

Special features to note

Angles of branches echoing drapes of robes 

This is a Lady / Courtier of the Heian era possibly a famous poet ?

Color balance blacks and reds showing what you can do with a limited palette 

Had Shigenobu been looking at some early Ukiyo-e prints with a limited color range?

Note how the branch creates depth despite the need for white space to add text ?

Mustard Seed Garden on Plums

The #mustardseedgarden manual of painting has a whole section devoted to depicting plum trees and blossom. The best known English translation by Mai Mai Sze though doesnt have the colored pages of this older Chinese edition.

In my copy the section starts on p.399 with a discussion of various painters ideas on method and then shows how to form branches starting with twigs then moving on to whole branches and trees then blossom separately and on branches.

There is however no depictions of or guides for painting the actual fruit!

New Technozi Series Plums !

The next #technozi series will be on the topic of #plums #plum #plumblossom

the #plum in art and poetry particularly #haiku and of course #hanzi / #kanji too

Don't forget there are two separate characters one for the tree and another for the fruit and blossom. Please Follow this blog or follow me on Google Plus or Twitter  to get notifications of exactly when I add new posts to this series.

Thank You