Posted by Dan (24.59.72.128) on March 25, 2004 at 00:08:02:
In Reply to: Re: Japanese Drawing posted by Arnold on March 24, 2004 at 17:52:23:
Hi Arnold,
Please save the "expert" for others! I am just a guy with a lot of opinions and some half-baked Japanese, trying hard to become something more. Especially, please take my opinions this way, with a grain of salt. I know very little about ukiyo-e painting in particular.
Speaking of which, I was wondering about some aspects of the drawing again today, in relation to its use as a study for a painting. There's one aspect that I thought might support that - namely the red that you mention, which does seem to be colored in as a guide to an intricate area of design, rather than as correction to a black sumi drawing, as we had discussed on the phone. But this seems somewhat irregular as well, breaking off where I wouldn't expect it to, as though someone had begun to fill it in, then stopped. All the red is definitely in one part of the drawing though, which wouldn't be quite how a correction would look.
My other confusion is why the Nampo poem would appear already on the study for the painting. This doesn't seem entirely necessary, unless the painting had to worked out around it. With surimono, the poems are carved on a separate block, designed to fit around the image after the image block is complete.
Ota Nampo did write an awful lot about his life and experiences. If I stumble on anything related to this when I get to that part of my dissertation research, I'll be happy to let you know.