About Me

AkaiHibana portrait

Self-introduction

自己紹介 (Jiko shōkai – Self introduction) time, like we say in Japanese.
My name is AkaiHibana (RedSparkle), Akai for short, a french man living in Japan from 2016. I came to Japan through my student path and I decided to stay in this wonderful country.

Artist path

About my artist path, it started when I came to Japan. At first, I drew manga character from my favorite manga such as Berserk or Kingdom. I learned how to draw by myself, I watched a lot of Youtube video about “How to draw”, about human faces, expressions, etc. I was really into this style at that time, yet, something happened, a revelation or as I say, a sparkle (火花).

Almost 1 year ago, I visited an exhibition about Hokusai (北斎) Ukiyo-e (浮世絵) art style, there was a lot of people and it was very crowded, yet, I had the opportunity to enter into the exhibition.
While I looked at Hokusai pieces of art, it impressed me, the form, the color and the style. Especially, with “The Great Wave off Kanagawa“.

The reason why I love this Ukiyo-e is because you can feel the wave strength, the overwhelming ocean and fury.

Tsunami_by_hokusai_19th_century

As I was walking through this exhibition, I was more and more excited to see more of it. My eyes were devouring each one of them, one after another.

The floral path

Chrysanthemums and Bee - Hokusai

The paroxysm of my excitement was when I saw the “Chrysanthemums and Bee“. The moment my eyes saw this Ukiyo-e, I knew that I wanted to draw like this. I though to myself that I have found my path, or at least the beginning of it. It  enlightened me, the color, the shape and the zen attitude coming from it.

From this point in time, I decided to learn how to draw Ukiyo-e style art.

After leaving the exhibition, I came back home, took my sketch book and I started to draw flowers from famous Ukiyo-e artist which I found on internet.
Then,  I started to train with this new style, I tried to learn this art style by imitating the grand master of Ukiyo-e, and I am still trying to.

With time and training, my art style started to take his own form and I used less and less references from famous artist, instead I used more and more photo of flowers in nature as a reference.

Yet, I haven’t created a full 100% original art piece, I think this time will soon come. When my skill level and my confidence in myself as an artist will reach a certain threshold.

Objective

My objective is to master the art of drawing Ukiyo-e bird and flower art (花鳥画 – Kacho-ga).

For website touring visitor

When you have finished reading this introduction about myself, please, take a look at my portfolio.

Photographer credit: takanahero

AkaiHibana - RedSparkleArt- Author-Painter-ukiyo-e artist- kachoga artist

AkaiHibana

AkaiHibana is a young artist with the objective to master the art of drawing Ukiyo-e bird and flower (花鳥画 – Kacho-ga).