The Hexacoto

I am a big fan of the art nouveau movement. In fact, I have previously done an illustration combining that art style and Pokémon, some of my favourite things.

However, many do not know that art nouveau took a lot of inspiration from Japanese art, especially woodblock prints, ukiyo-e. From Wikipedia:

Two-dimensional Art Nouveau pieces were painted, drawn, and printed in popular forms such as advertisements, posters, labels, magazines, and the like.Japanese wood-block prints, with their curved lines, patterned surfaces, contrasting voids, and flatness of visual plane, also inspired Art Nouveau. Some line and curve patterns became graphic clichés that were later found in works of artists from many parts of the world.

And ukiyo-e’s flatness of dimension highly influenced the Japanese animation industry, and that particular art style is sometimes called “superflat.”

Thus I thought it really interesting when I came across this article of a Japanese ex-host (escort) Takumi Kanehara who gave up his life at the bar pleasing woman and turned to creating pleasing works of art. He produced a series of Art Nouveau Mucha-style pictures of various Studio Ghlibli’s works such as Howl’s Moving Castle, Spirited Away, Kiki’s Delivery Service, and more. Thus in essence, anime art nouveau. How does one even begin to describe that? A work based on modern Japanese animation using a Western art style inspired by traditional Japanese art.

To find out more of his works, here is Kanehara’s Twitter.