hey mr, i did a tribute to hiroshige too!! :O
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/86772/

i still remeber well his beautiful paintings whith these bridges on water :3

One Hundred Views of Mt. Fuji, baby. It's the shiznit. ;) AND his veiws of Edo, along with Hokusai and...dammit. The dude whose name starts with Y. :/

That was one of the first of your pieces I ever saw, and I immediately fell in love with it. Since then my impression of you as an artistic powerhose has only increased. Viva la Tark! Tarkemada!! :D

Very cool.

Thankye! :)

There are just.... so many good things about this I don't even know where to start.

I've been watching a LOT of Japanese period pieces recently. Can you tell? :/

*hugstight*

As if that's a bad thing. :)

I wish I could be more confident about letting my influences show.

I have this very conflicted relationship with how much I think my art is mine and how much isn't.

Ach zo! SO many good movies out there. YUM.

But taking apart someone's look is very nearly as good as getting 'em to teach you themselves! It's a tried-and-true method for learning, even unto copying art 'til you can do it perfectly.

Remember--you're still at a very early part of your growth curve. Rarely do artists come out of the starting gate with their style fully developed. That's a problem in and of itself; it can cage your growth. The *vision* behind your work is the most important part. Style, technique, those are things used to more fully express your ideas. Keep working on *what* you're trying to say. Keep playing with style. Your voice will be there to assure that the end product isn't an echo of someone else's style.

well said.

*hugs*

As always, thank you so much....

Anytime, my bean. Anytime. That's what friends are here for.

Yeah... thats entirely true. Thats the key to style actually, taking what someone else did and making it your own.

Have you seen Seven Samurai? Now there is a classy movie, so long but so good that you just don't even notice.

And dude, nice picture. Heh, reminds me of The Wanderer by AD.

I be a big Kurosawa fan too! Seven Samurai's definitely one of his best. My favorite line from that movie:

"Killed two."

Thank you kindly, sir!

great work :o

*hugstight* Danke. ;)

why are you so awesome D:

*grins* Hey, I just draw stuff. Why is you so awesome on the awesome-meter?

mmmm, loose & contrasty.

those highlights in his hat..... soooo satisfying.

srsly man, thank you for sharing this.

Hey, I appreciate all the feedback, believe me. I am so inspired by work like yours. It makes me want to draw, to paint. I can't think of a better way of saying I dig a person's stuff than by tellin' 'em they make me want to draw, to become a better artist.

Interesting piece, dood! And the artist you were thinking of besides Hokusai and Hiroshige is Yoshitoshi. His sesne of composition is amazing, and his stuff still looks fresh over a hundred years later. It looks like you carved the orange out of the black. Could be a whole comic in this!

That's him!! I love his stuff!! There's a great retrospective of his work in the latest Bud Plant catalog.

's all made in Painter, using a toned canvas and the Smooth Pen tool. That comic idea....hmmm. I wonder...

ok
you god damn rock

*hugstight* I'll take that...coming from someone who rocks. ;)

Oooh. Sweet.

Heh. Reminds me of the beginning of "Ninja Scroll," the scene where he throws his onigiri into the air and manages to defeat all the ninja before it hits the ground. I was having some sort of Mifune-gasm or something watching that... and then the anime deteriorated into total crap. But that one scene was, like, one of the coolest things ever.

*nods* I hear you. I was expecting Ninja Scroll to be a lot better than it turned out to be, what with all the hype. :/

Have you seen Inagaki's Samurai Trilogy, or any of the Zatoichi movies starring Shintaro Katsu? I drew my inspiration from the latter. The quality of the stories varies a lot from film to film, but they're all pretty and when all the elements come together....WOW.

I've seen the Samurai trilogy and Zatoichi to Yojimbo; that's the only of the Zatoichi films I've actually seen other than a few clips on YouTube.

I'd strongly recommend the first in the movie series, the Tale of Zatoichi; the third, New Tale of Zatoichi; Zatoichi the Fugitive, Zatoichi and the Chest of Gold, and Fight, Zatoichi, Fight! They've got the strongest stories and character development of those I've seen thus far. (I liked 'em enough to buy 'em, for what that's worth.) The series gets cornier and more improbable as it goes along. Still, it's good fun, and more serious than the Lone Wolf and Cub series (which is like Adam West's Batman in Samurai form!).

Whistler did a bridge picture with a similar angle to this... I know he was inspired by the Japanese so I guess that's where it came from. Is this digital?

Yep, Whistler was directly influenced by Hiroshige. Putting the two pieces next to each other, the resonance is pretty impressive. Whistler took it in his own direction, but you can see the influence clearly.

'tis all Painter! I used the Smooth Pen tool.

A lot of the guys around that era in European art are really good... Mucha, Klimt and Sargent (--I wish he had done more symbolic/ historical stuff). What I've started getting into is Egytian art... as in Whistler's case, it's interesting to see two different traditions colliding.

Ho man, that era was chock full o' goodness! Albert Bocklin, Sidney Sime, Carlos Schwabe, Alma-Tedema, Jerome...the three you named are among my top ten favorite artists of all time. Sargent for his incredible facility, Mucha for his endurance, Klimt for his inventiveness, expressiveness and...well, his porn. :)

I love seeing the results of such collisions. Lookin' forward to seeing what effect Egyptian art has on your own work, mon.

yay rickety bridge!!!!

I gotta do more of these. Man! ;) (I still owe you a phone call. Give me a few more days and I'll give you a jingle. It's been ruff hereabouts.)

you sware?!
hehehe ^___^

I most solemnly promise. :)

This'd be right at home in the callig-ink section of the Tokyo National. Ya can't even measure how much style this one is packing.

Been tackling this dover book on Notan, trying to up my skill set with composition. That, and studying a lot of Hokusai and his contemporaries. Kicks my ass, in a way that's completely welcome (and needed). So much to learn!!

*hugs* Thanks, you.

Very atmospheric. Very scratchy. Very, very nice.

Thank you very much! Sometimes the stuff that zips out the quickest is the bestest.

ARRRRGH how did I miss this??

*hugs* Just 'cuz I thought you deserved one. ;)

Excellent...

Danke!

quite beautiful.

Tank you! *hugs*

The composition here is giving me seizures of joy.

Egad!! *smelling salts*

This looks like a really cool linoleum print.

Painter's liquid ink tools, man, I'm telling ya. Awesome goodness.

I tried Painter, but whenever I used the "decrease brush size" shortcut, it wouldn't allow me to paint anymore until I restarted it, and I got tired of changing the brush size manually. I was pretty desperate for about...uhmm..20 minutes, which was when Photoshop finished downloading.
I still have no clue where that bug could possibly have come from.

Speaking of linoleum prints, I wish I had the nerve to go back to doing those. Everything I did looked like a Communist realist propaganda poster >_<. Which isn't a bad thing, mind you.
Have you ever tried? I'd imagine lino prints would suit your style.

Painter is jam-packed with cool functions. It's also unstable. I'm using IX, and you'd think they'd have the stability issue dealt with. NOPE.

I did lino prints a very long time ago. Almost went to mum's to grab all the lino tools and now I wish I had. Great fun, that, and I miss it. *hugs*