It was an unproductive day on the Internet. You’re just minding your own business, scrolling through some hilarious cat pictures. Then it hits you. Something so amazing and extraordinary that you stop and wonder, “Why have I never seen this before?” This was one of those moments for me.
Jed Henry, an amazing illustrator, and David Bull, a traditional woodblock print maker, have come together to create beautiful illustrations of modern anime and video game characters in Japanese painting style. (You can learn more about the artists here.) They are called Giclée Prints, “giclée” meaning “squirt of a liquid” in French. This fancy term describes that each print is simply printed by inkjet, giving each photo the resolution and fineness of the original painting.
At first, I didn’t understand what I was looking at, but as I scrolled through I recognized more and more of the references. The art style absolutely blew me away. The fine details and and precision of each stroke makes you think about how long it must take to create each of these paintings. Having taken lessons for traditional Chinese/Japanese painting, I know that it’s not easy, and it takes a true master to produce works such as these. You can find (and purchase if you so choose) the entire collection from this website. For now, I share with you some of my favourite prints. I’ve linked the page at the bottom of each picture so you can check it out for yourself and learn what each of the characters mean. Can you spot all the references?
FTC: This is not a sponsored post, and all opinions are completely genuine. ♥