How to Draw Japan

About this book

100 SUBJECTS. 6 STEPS EACH. 600 STEP-BY-STEP DRAWINGS. EVERY LANDSCAPE BUILT THE WAY NATURE BUILDS IT — LAND, HERO, LIFE, SEASON, FINISH.

Mount Fuji at dawn. A waterfall in one white fall. One cherry tree in full bloom. A wave curling over a dark reef. Snow settling, cushion by cushion, onto pine boughs.

Your characters have to stand SOMEWHERE — and now that somewhere will look like Japan itself. Every subject in this book is built the same honest way: one horizon line, one base line and one hero line that never move, the landform (ridge, valley, cliff, shore, basin, slope, gorge), the hero that gives the place its heart (volcano, waterfall, meandering river, pine, cherry, maple, bamboo grove, wave, sea of clouds), the living detail that names the exact place, and the season and weather that make it one particular day — snow, rain, mist, petal fall, moonlight, a rainbow. Nothing moves between steps — the shoreline you draw in Step 2 is the exact shoreline the wave breaks on in Step 6.

Inside: 20 mountains & volcanoes · 20 rivers, lakes & waterfalls · 20 forests, trees & flowers · 20 coasts, seas, skies & weather · 20 subjects that are the four seasons themselves. Every subject is named in English, Japanese and romaji — this book is also a walk through the words of the wild.

And after every subject: a practice page. Trace the faint scene, then draw your own version in the empty frame. 100 subjects, 100 practice pages.

No photograph, painting or artist's composition is drawn anywhere in this book — every landscape is a generic Japanese landform, plant, coast or sky, so the country you invent with this system is completely yours. All you need is a pencil and an eraser.