In a time when information is more accessible than ever, the ancient parable of the blind men and the elephant has never been more...

Rembrandt van Rijn, one of the most celebrated artists of the Dutch Golden Age, is renowned for his masterful use of light and shadow, as...

Creativity, at its core, is about sharing one's vision with the world. When a maker creates, they share their emotions, whether it's joy...

Since 2019, a desire to travel to Japan had been festering within me. With the pandemic this desire grew only stronger as it was delayed...

As manager of my own website, I can tell from online traffic which designs are more popular than others. Sometimes I understand why a...

As we approach the New Year, I felt it was appropriate to discuss my design of new year fireworks on the Thames and Hiroshige's...

All art is a self-portrait, and this painting of a ship on gold leaf in mineral pigments is no different. It has a lot within to unpack...

I recently had the opportunity to see Noh being performed in London. Noh is one of the oldest continous forms of theatre in the world...

Southern Barbarians Come to Trade Foreign traders and Japanese merchants interact with one another. Goods are inspected and money changes...

Hokusai is well known for depicting the lives of ordinary people in his drawings and prints, but what do his artworks tell us about those...

Junichiro Tanizaki (1886-1965) once wrote an aesthetic treatise titled 'In Praise of Shadows'. The essay discusses traditional Japanese...

The influence of Hokusai on subsequent artists is truly huge; ranging from Degas, Van Gogh, Klimt, Picasso (he loved the octopus and...

A major part of traditional Japanese and Chinese painting is the use of mineral pigments. Nowadays, colours and paint can be made...

There are two main artistic influences on my cat paintings: Hashiguchi Goyo (1880-1921) and Tsuguharu Foujita (1886-1968). In this post,...

Sizing paper in the context I’m going to discuss isn’t about measuring the size, but rather applying a ‘sizing’ solution (usually some...