Initial thoughts are that this is a wonderful book, certainly worth the price.
My deeper thoughts: This book made me think quite a bit about how we talk to people in the present and in the future about how to make art.
When I think about most art history that I read, I find it’s uncommon to locate anecdotes that discuss directly how the artist created their work. An offhand example - in reading two books about John Singer Sargent this year in 2025, I can estimate that only ten or so paragraphs were dedicated to how he worked. How did he hold his brushes? I found out eventually (he kept many brushes in one hand to select from, he hovered with his brush over the canvas for quite some time before making a mark) but it did take me a while. I waded through 1000+ pages about his family, how much money he made, his friends, drama that happened, what he ate for dinner and his eating style, and critical receptions before finding those five or six total pages about how he worked.
Hokusai’s Method is the opposite of that. This book shows directly how Hokusai worked on his art, and how he suggests different audiences of readers to work on their art. I was oddly shocked to see that this book contains pages where Hokusai shows readers how to hold a brush. Hokusai drew a picture of a hand holding a brush and how to make marks with that particular hold. It sounds like the simplest thing on the planet, but I can’t think of any other art book that shows this that I’ve seen. Usually there are countless watercolor swatches and step-by-step instructions, but it’s been very rare for me personally to see any image of any hand, ever. Even on instagram, I don’t often see artist hands in tutorial posts. I usually just see the brush. It struck me as I was reading this book that much of the art instruction that I’ve encountered is a little bit like watching a soccer game where all you see is the ball, and maybe for a split second moment, a shoe or two kicking it along.
In addition to the revolution of depicting a hand holding a brush, I have to appreciate Hokusai’s ability to angle himself towards the appropriate audience. The anthology kicks off with a whole volume dedicated to showing children how to draw simple scenes and animals by utilizing Kanji mnemonics that they’d already be learning how to write. Later on, there’s more advanced how-tos for older artists. But I also get the feeling he wouldn’t begrudge a 9 year-old of trying out the more difficult tutorials.
So, what we have here is a manual, a series of manuals about making art, dancing, different styles of art, all highly attuned to their audiences of various ages and pursuits. I had to think as I was reviewing the dance manuals that the depicted dances could have easily been lost to time without such clear illustrations.
If these are the gifts of infinite value that illustration gives to all of us in the future, why do people * still * pooh-pooh illustration so very much?
There’s certainly a part of human nature that loves mystery. It’s mysterious and alluring when an artist pops off dozens of paintings that look realistic and that speak to our soul. We love the forgotten, forbidden temple, because it contains puzzles, traps, and treasure.
Maybe, just maybe, illustration is seen as threatening to some of that mystery. It’s the path through the temple. Maybe it’s a little threatening to know John Singer Sargent’s exact workflow, because we’d rather keep experiencing mysterious awe, rather than see him as, you know, just a dude.
But I think both can co-exist at the same time. We can have Hokusai’s Method, and his drawings about how to draw a cat, and the cat can still speak directly to our souls 200+ years later. We can totally have Hokusai’s iconic wave and his illustration of a dancing guy with a beer belly at the same time. For that reason, this is the most enlightening art book I’ve held in my hands for a while.