Wednesday, March 12, 2008

manga: chibi

Teaching is good. I learn so many new things (or relearn) by doing it and get new ideas and influences in my art. Take the manga; I learn more and more about Japanese culture and art, I take up working with ink again - and I get the impulse to teach my watercolour students about Japanese/Chinese ink paintings.

The latest thing for me is chibi - which in Japanese means short person or small child. In anime (animated manga) chibis are very often cute little characters with big heads and small bodies.

I can't resist - suddenly I spend time - more than I need for the manga class - in my studio working on my own little chibi characters ... smiling ...

at Willem Kerseboom you can find a lot of really good Chinese art obviously influenced by chibis: Han Yajuan, Yin Jun, Zhang Zui and the famous Yoshitomo Nara (Japanese). More about him at Wikipedia.

4 comments:

Esti said...

It's great to know about the chibis. Could you be good at everything? I'm impressed, wow! :)

Hellie said...

Sis...
Reminds me of how you used to draw when you were about 10. Oh, how impressed I was... Maybe you should find some of those cartoons just for fun to compare... They had huge eyes too.
Kisses,
Helene

Alexandra Hedberg said...

I'll have to locate them then, Sis. Do you have a clue where they could be?

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.