How to Draw Japan

About this book

Every drawing fails or succeeds on its surfaces. This book teaches a single transferable grammar — the Grammar of the Surface — on one hundred Japanese materials, each drawn in close-up until it fills the page: fix the frame and the raking light and never let them wander, block in the surface's great tonal masses, draw the structure that tells how the material is made (the joints of a castle stone wall, the crossings of a weave, the flow of wood grain, the courses of roof tiles, the crack net of a glaze), and then, at Step 4 only, place the surface's one touch point — a gleam on the lacquer, a water drop beading on bamboo, one bold crack, the sheen of a handrail polished by a century of hands, a tuft of moss in a stone joint. Fine texture comes last, at Step 5, like seasoning. Cedar and keyaki, tatami rush and indigo cotton, ishigaki and namako walls, black lacquer and gold leaf, crackle glaze, rust and verdigris: 100 surfaces in 6 fully illustrated steps each, plus a guided practice page for every single one. No real artefact is depicted; every subject is a generalised type of Japanese material, so the grammar transfers to any surface you will ever touch.