Historical artifact

As I have been more and more intrigued by the ukiyo-e art of Japan during the Edo period, I found it only appropriate to examine and reproduce the techniques and aesthetics of this art form for my historical artifact.

Reference sources:

https://www.britannica.com/art/ukiyo-e

Reference images:

For this project, I struggled with it more than I wanted to. Specifically, I spent a lot of time trying to decide on a subject for my ukiyo-e painting. I wanted to do a scene from mythology but realized that required more research than I could properly put into this project and I wanted to avoid rushing through it and not respectfully treating the subject. Then, I considered a historical moment, but again, stumbled across the problem of needing a certain amount of time to do the proper research which was lacking. A scene from a brothel was also off the table. I sketched out an idea for a beautiful woman, but when trying to decide what style I wanted to draw her in, found myself in the same predicament: If I wanted to draw her in a typical Ukiyo-e style, I would need to study many paintings and prints to do it properly and respectfully. So finally, I found a subject I could paint that would require the least amount of research, studying, and time to execute it: A beautiful landscape.

I chose mountains, as this was a typical element in ukiyo-e prints. That paired with clouds and the sun, I felt like I covered a sufficient amount of elements from traditional paintings. Then, I looked into just how to paint them. For the mountains, I painted them going from red to green. The foreground has yellow slowly added to it. For the cliffs, I used a flat brush to paint the curved ledges and the trees on the mountains.

I wanted to add a certain contemporary and personal touch and added an element of perspective into the piece. Usually, ukiyo-e prints don’t have much of a perspective, but I wanted the viewer to feel like they were looking up into the mountain-scape. I achieved this by bending the mountains inwards slightly and curving the clouds.

To complete the piece, I made it into a scroll, gluing two wood rods to the ends of the painting (which I wrapped up the back) and attaching bamboo string so I could hang it up. this was something I wanted to achieve since the beginning and getting it to hang properly and look like a traditional scroll was quite satisfying!

I would give myself an 8/10! very proud of what I was able to make, and I felt like I did my subject and this area of art justice. I spent probably close to 8-10 hours on it, between sketching, researching, painting, and putting together the scroll.