Since I fried my brain watching movies this weekend (due to a 2 for 1
rental rate at the store) I watched 2 movies by the Chinese director
King Hu, "A Touch of Zen" and "Legend of the Mountain" both films have
a character who is both a scholar and an artist (portrayed by the same
actor too). King Hu is one of those directors who can direct very
"real" looking action scenes, capture turtles basking and somehow
manage to get sparrows to fly a certain way too it seems.
I did some screencaps of scenes which have close ups of paintings,
painting equipment used in the East Asian art. In one of the screen
caps you will lots of different size brushes. If you recall
http://1happyturtle.com/makoto/portraits/NNNakajimaxl.jpg
Nakajima Nobori us shown drawing with only one brush. However, I took
a closer look at the paintings of Saitou and Hijikata and noticed that
to draw their hair he must have had a fine or small brush. In the
screen caps you will also note that an artist likes to have his/her
teapot and teacup nearby because when you use waterbased paints you
will in general have to work fast and you don't want to have to get up
and run to the kitchen for tea. I also wonder if he used stick
charcoal to sketch first too. Lastly, I happen to have 2 screencaps
of a woman, the demoness in "Legend of the Mountain" painting and
preparing paints during the daytime and at night. Now, I figure while
Nakajima Nobori was on his "best behaviour" I figure they government
must have had the prisoners do some simple manual labor and not just
have them sit there the whole day then perhaps he painted at night by
candle light which may explain why he loves to use the color black
even though in his self-portrait he had primary colors on the table
---easier to see the color black in low light situations (alternate
theory is that every artist at the time liked to use black). Keep in
mind that NN is not a professional he drew the portraits for himself.
I'm impressed how he drew Hara Gorou's sister's feet...
Screencaps are a great learning tool ^_^
URL:
http://www.streamload.com/secretarytocapt3/
Folder: NakajimaN
Filename: "paint" zipped jpegs
password: makoto
Actor to play NN in the ultimate Shinsengumi movie
http://1happyturtle.com/makoto/NNcast.jpg
now, who has 500 million they can spare ^_^