Fascinating post from BookRiot on an artist who laboriously illustrated each scene in the world’s oldest known novel, The Tale of the Genji, while incorporating a traditional Japanese style of painting:
The process of creating each scene in the The Tale of Genji was time-consuming and laborious. Agameishi usually took up to two weeks to paint each illustration, using her calligraphy brush, which added touching sensitivity to every line. There was an important link between calligraphy and her visual work.
“My style not only contains the calligraphic rendering of ancient Japanese (Waka) short poems, the entire picture is set in the way calligraphers endeavor to put written characters to life–and harmony–on paper… In my paintings, calligraphy characters combine like persons and the person characters appear like calligraphy.”
