HOKUSAI

Hokusai

1760 - 1849

Katsushika Hokusai was a Japanese Ukiyo-e artist of the Edo period, active as a painter and printmaker, he is best known for the woodblock print series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, which includes the iconic print The Great Wave of Kanagawa. Hokusai was instrumental in developing Ukiyo-e from a style of portraiture largely focused on courtesans and actors into a much broader style of art that focused on landscapes, plants, and animals. Hokusai worked in a variety of mediums including painting and book illustration. Starting as a young child, he continued working and improving his style until his death, aged 88. In his long and successful career, he produced over 30,000 paintings, sketches, woodblock prints, and images for picture books. Innovative in his compositions and exceptional in his drawing technique, Hokusai is considered one of the greatest masters in the history of art. His works had a significant influence on Vincent Van Gogh, Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, as well as the Impressionist and Art Nouveau movements. His woodcut prints were collected by many European artists, including Degas, Gauguin, Klimt, Franz Marc, August Macke, Manet, and Van Gogh.

Degas said of him, "Hokusai is not just one artist among others in the Floating World. He is an island, a continent, a whole world in himself."

Hokusai’s is more popular than ever, and his inspiration can be seen in Contemporary Japanese art, posters, books , Anime and Manga films. A biographical film about this Master Artist was released in Japan on May 28, 2021. It premiered at the 33rd Tokyo International Film Festival.

TABOR CLASS

The Saturday Tabor class created beautiful views celebrating

Spring and cherry blossoms, using watercolor pencils and crayons.

ABERNETHY CLASS

The Abernethy classes used several techniques to create

their mixed media prints. For the first step they did a

drawing of the image and then traced it onto a piece of

clear plastic with a dark marker. We then created the background

on watercolor paper with watercolor pencils and then wet the paper.

The marker image was pressed onto the damp paper to transfer

the image. Next, they applied color to the image. They were able to get a basic

feeling for the process of prints even though they did not carve into

woodblocks.