*I have also included this research in my sketchbook as part of the same project.

Hokusai was a Japanese artist who is perhaps most well-known for his woodblock prints that depicted landscapes, such as the world renown print ‘The Great Wave off Kanagawa’. The type of printing that Hokusai mastered over the course of his life was called ukiyo-e, which translates to ‘pictures of the floating world’, they were Japanese paintings and prints that originally depicted landscapes of the city’s leisure districts during the Edo period. They were often idyllic and peaceful, which definitely translates through Hokusai’s paintings and prints which look rather serene and make me feel calm inside. 

There are a lot of things that I could write about the history of Hokusai, he lived a long and eventful life and created art under 30 different names throughout his career. For the sake of keeping this research to the point of illustration and printing alone though, I will try to keep the elements of his past and life as brief as possible, while still talking about his style and influences. At the start of his career, Hokusai originally created prints of Kabuki actors, which was common for ukiyo-e artists at the time, this changed when his wife died in 1793, Hokusai began to explore other art styles from outside of Japan, including European styles that he was exposed to through French and Dutch copper engravings that he managed to acquire throughout his life. This was just one of the first changes in his life that would spark the work of the Hokusai that we know today, he was expelled from one of the schools he attended, and he credited the embarrassment caused by this event as being motivation and inspiration for his art. He changed his focus from painting and printing actors and instead became focused on landscapes and imagery depicting the daily life of Japanese people from all manners of social classes. It was this change in subject that led him down the path of art that he is most well known for. 

As well as creating prints, Hokusai spent time producing many brush paintings, called surimono, there is a story that during a Tokyo festival in 1804, Hokusai created a portrait of the Buddhist priest Daruma which was said to be 600ft long using a broom and buckets of ink. Another story tells a tale that during a competition against more traditional artist, Hokusai created a painting by painting a blue curve on a piece of paper and chased a chicken with red paint on it’s feet across the painting, saying that it depicted the Tatsuta river with red maple leaves floating in it. Hokusai won the competition. While I may not be using such out there and amazing methods to create my art, I could definitely learn from Hokusai’s creativity and use it as inspiration to try new methods of art throughout the course of the upcoming project. Hokusai became increasingly famous throughout Japan due to his art and the fact that he was an extremely talented self-promoter, something that I really need to work on because I am painfully bad at promoting myself, probably due to a lack of confidence in my art, learning about how Hokusai promoted himself could definitely help me build the confidence to promote my own art. 

At age 51 Hokusai entered the period of his life where he created Hokusai Manga and a number of art manuals, these manuals served as an easy way for him to make more money to fuel his life and career. The first book of Hokusai’s Manga was published in 1814 and it, as well as his sketches and caricatures heavily influenced the modern form of manga comics that many people around the world read today. Hokusai inspired generations and created a culture, a worldwide phenomenon. I should mention now that I have no intention to pursue manga as a source of inspiration this project, but I am definitely interested in how Hokusai started it. He published 12 volumes of his manga, along with another 3 that were published after his death, this collection contained thousands of drawings of animals, religious figures and everyday people in Japan. I really like the fact that Hokusai loved to draw animals, I do too, and I will use this as a source of inspiration for my design of a print this project, I am more than considering using imagery of animals in my design. In 1820 Hokusai secured fame as an artist across Japan and it was during this time period that he created his most famous works ’36 views of Mount Fuji’ which included the print that I am most inspired by called ‘The Great Wave off Kangawa’, it is the prints of waves that I love the most from Hokusai, they are so serene and the style is so clean and calming, I want to achieve a similar effect in some of the prints I create throughout the course of this project so I may use imagery of water or waves in my designs.