Categories
Art

28 Famous Murders with Verse

This has to be the most grisly ukiyo-e print I’ve ever seen:

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It’s from Tsukioka Yoshitoshi’s ’28 Famous Murders with Verse’ and the others are suitably gruesome. Yoshitoshi is regarded as the last great master of Ukiyo-e (he died 1892) and his work was brought to my attention by the quite wonderful Saladin Ahmed (he’s well worth a follow and his book is pretty damn good too, though that’s a post for another time).

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He was a student of Kuniyoshi (who we’ve covered once or twice before). To my knowledge Kuniyoshi never produced anything as gruesome (though he did plenty of body horror and genital demons, including one series showcasing the versatility of an ample scrotum) but you can see influences in some of Yoshitoshi’s earlier work; his Battle of Cats and Mice (above) chimes with Kuniyoshi’s cat prints and they both have a fondness for comedic animal prints.

(Left: Yoshitoshi's A giant octopus takes on all comers at the fish market at Nihombashi; Right: Kuniyoshi's Octopus Games)

(Left: Yoshitoshi’s A giant octopus takes on all comers at the fish market at Nihombashi; Right: Kuniyoshi’s Octopus Games)

Some of Yoshitoshi’s warrior depictions are definitely bloodier and more brutal than most prints I’ve seen before (I’ve also spotted at least two trussed pregnant women in his works) but his fantastical stuff is just great. You can browse almost all of his works at yoshitoshi.net, and I’d recommend Crazy Pictures of placed in Tokyo, New Forms of 36 Ghosts, and One Hundred Ghost Stories of China and Japan, but they’re all very very good. So much so I just want to embed them all here! But I’ll limit myself to a few.

Farting at a kappa at the lumber yard in Fukagawa from 'Crazy Pictures of Famous Places in Tōkyō'

Farting at a kappa at the lumber yard in Fukagawa from ‘Crazy Pictures of Famous Places in Tōkyō’

The greedy old lady and the box of demons from 'The greedy old lady and the box of demons from 'One Hundred Ghost Stories of China and Japan'

The greedy old lady and the box of demons from ‘The greedy old lady and the box of demons from ‘One Hundred Ghost Stories of China and Japan’

The demon Ibaraki with her severed arm from 'New forms of 36 Ghosts'

The demon Ibaraki with her severed arm from ‘New forms of 36 Ghosts’

As an aside I’ve just noticed the works of Japanese woodblock masters sound a lot like Buzzfeed articles.

Edit: tweaked my phrasing a little…

Categories
My Doodles

With a private boat (cont.)

Just in case anyone’s interested the original sketch went a little something like this (complete with hot chocolate stain):

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I can’t actually remember which way round the inspiration worked but the idea was to essentially combine these two images:

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(By Maurice Sendak and Katsushika Hokusai respectively)

More specifically the idea was to render the first in the style of the second, or insert the characters of the first into the second. My original intention was also to recreate the scene in an ink & wash style but in the end I decided I wouldn’t be able to get the fine detail and the homage itself would be lost so I went for manipulating the Hokusai image rather than recreating it.

The main difference between my original sketch and the final (lined paper and stain aside) is the positioning of Max and the Wild Thing. Originally I’d pictured Max in the nearest boat (which I’d incorrectly remembered as breaking through the near wave) with the Wild Thing emerging from between the rear wave but in the end I opted to switch them. Firstly to echo Sendak’s original spread (Wild Thing left; Max right) and I also didn’t want the sail on Max’s boat obscuring any of the waves themselves (though i didn’t mind it obscuring Mt Fuji as I like that it stops this image being a view of Mt Fuji).

So with the two nearer boats shopped out and Max’s mast, sail and self added in I was just left with the Wild Thing. The first attempt was pretty awful, I was trying to construct it from various flat elements and then stealing bits of texture from the original (as I had with the sail and Max) but it looked too out of place. Then the obvious hit me: drop in a sea creature/dragon from an existing japanese woodblock. A bit of scouting around found this little gem:

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So with a little help from Utagawa Kuniyoshi and some recolouring so the dragon isn’t lost in the wave we have our final picture:

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About which I am quite chuffed.

Categories
My Doodles

With a private boat

and in and out of weeks
and almost over a year
to where the wild things are.

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A (slightly belated) birthday present for Alexis (click for full)

Categories
Art

Horiyoshi III

Hopefully Glen’s tattoo went well this afternoon – chatting about tattoos with both Glen and Alexis has made me think a bit more about whether I want a tattoo (which I’m pretty sure I do) and if so what I would want (which I am fairly clueless on).

Whilst scouting around for ideas I came across this interview with Horiyoshi III:

I think if I was to get a tattoo I wouldn’t quite have the balls to:

  • Have it done with what appears to be a large screwdriver
  • Have a full body irezumi

That aside his work is pretty amazing – reminds me of a guy I once saw in a Kyoto bathhouse.

More of his work from his website:

It appears you will also soon be able to buy Horiyoshi III clothing.