Chinese - Japanese Style Art
- May 5, 2017
- 3 min read
I've been feeling a bit down lately and not so creative or willing to draw much. So I fell back on something creative I like doing a lot. Japanese ink painting, or sumi e. I used to do this traditionally with Indian ink and watercolours but digitally it's less scary and mistakes can be erased very easily.
Took a look at Daily Spitpaint on Facebook and found the daily subjects to choose from. I chose what triggered my creativity the quickest, Garden of Kings. Beforehand I had no idea what I was going to paint until I painted the first stroke of ink. A koi fish because they look elegant and have beautiful fins that can help with dynamic and composition. After finishing the koi I painted the garden, river plants that grow in Japan and in the Netherlands and made the koi much bigger than the plant to create a kind of surrealism.
As you know by now I like to experiment with sizes and perspectives.
*I don't care for the Facebook likes at all. Only using it for marketing purposes.
The koi looks a bit like these Japanese circles.
Got very useful feedback on this one! Agnes told me there was hesitation that needed to be sorted out first and Hilâl told me the text was in the way and the spot on the head should be darker. My mother told me some lines of the koi could be thicker and the plant needed more suggestion to make it look more like a plant with actual leaves. At first I didn't understand Agnes' feedback but got it later. No hesitation left in my final illustration! Couldn't have fixed it like this if it were real ink.
Right now the painting looks similar to a previous painting I painted with my mouse last year. A completely different style and technique!
First I posted the illustration without texture on Daily Spitpaint and got 147 likes from members. Photo texture and photo bashing will get me banned in this group.
In Level Up I got 360 likes and 5 shares. 60 likes an hour. I expected people to ignore my post. By the way... I was NOT looking for feedback but also didn't want to break any rules. I just dropped it in there. Last times were a year ago when I almost got none. This painting was for selfish reasons, getting my art on that page.....
What about Instagram? Yes, I've posted it on Instagram several times, too. Instagram is a great source for growing a following and receiving commissions. Only 160-180 or so followers for me but I'll get there one day. I'm not concerned about it for now.
The good news is, though, two of my favourite Japanese artists have liked my art several times! One of them follows me. Yuki Nishimoto is a great sumi e artist living in Japan painting with ink on big canvases for his expositions. His subjects vary from creatures to characters doing sports. What they have in common is their inky dynamic style. I'd love to interview him one day.
The other artist is Gyousyou Suzuki. Don't know if that's his real name. He paints and draws Japanese calligraphy on paper. Sometimes with a normal pen and sometimes with a brush. He releases short videos daily on Instagram. That's also how I found him. A few weeks ago he announced that he wrote old Japanese style scrolls and signs for a new Japanese cultural TV series.
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