Hokusai: Lines and Patterns

KATSUSHIKA HOKUSAI (1760-1849)

The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, 1829-32

Art Style: Japanese Ukiyo-e Art (pictures of everyday life in old Japan)

Art Terms: Woodblock Prints

Activity: Drawing

Materials: Paper and Markers, Black Sharpies

Meet the Artist: Hokusai was one of the great Japanese woodblock print artists. We watched this really great short animated video from youtube here about the life of Hokusai (I used the ladybug to project it off my iphone screen. It would have been better if I brought in my speakers, though). *NOTE ABOUT THE YOUTUBE VIDEO: stop before the credits! There's lots of sumo wrestler butt cheek. It's totally innocent but might be distracting for the kids :) Hokusai made his woodblock prints by carving his designs into flat pieces of wood and then producing prints by pressing that wood onto paper after he painted them with ink.

Discussion: After the movie, I brought up a picture of his famous The Great Wave woodblock (pictured at top - here is the 2-slide slideshow I used), and we talked about it (using the discussion questions - 1. What do you see? 2. What more can you find? 3. What makes you say that?) 

We also discussed how it's divided into sections: the background, which is plain, and then the waves themselves. The second slide I am so sorry to say is an image I found on pinterest and have not been able to track it back to the original artist, so there is no artist credit... but we used his/her interpretation of this work as our inspiration, since it shows really clearly how you can divide the waves into sections and fill each with different patterns.

Activity:  Have the kids look at the Great Wave woodblock and begin drawing waves on their paper with a black sharpie (*always make sure they have scratch paper under their art paper when you use sharpies so it doesn't bleed onto their desks). It helps to show them on the board how to start, drawing a great big wave across the middle. Then from there, they can sub-divide that wave and even throw in a mountain (Hokusai's is Mt. Fuji) or volcano... Once they have waves, they can then fill them in with whatever patterns they like. You might want to have some kids come up to the board and share a pattern...

Student Work:

(these are done by 7th graders)