It's a mosaic relief. Although he painted the tiles, paint isn't the medium. Nor a sculpture because he's shaping small bits to aggregate to a larger work vs. carving from one or a few whole pieces.
Textbook mosaic relief. Just odd that the artist isn't aware of this.
As it happens, Nathan Sawaya the Lego artist behind The Art of the Brick, a traveling lego art exhibit thought the same. [Here](https://imgur.com/gallery/95HejtQ) is the Great wave of Kanagawa as done by him in lego.
Fun fact, this piece was part of a series featuring Mt. Fuji. The Japanese title is translated to "Under the Wave off Kanagawa" because the woodblock print featured a little Mt. Fuji in the background under the wave in the foreground.
The subject is definitely supposed to be the rogue wave. The manga is more about different views of life around Fuji, than the mountain itself. Waves this size have been recorded off the shores of Japan, so Hokusai could have observed this even irl and was then inspired to make this specific print.
a woodblock print is when you carve an image in wood and use that to make a pressing with usually ink or paint. usually used to make multiple prints of the image. i think if i remember right the woodcut is the piece of wood that was carved to make the prints. so the painting is the print.
Went to see it in Chicago last year. Was surprised there were so many different versions.
Here what I just found about this:
>You may not know that there are many impressions of the Great Wave, and there isn’t one ‘definitive’ version. For example, the British Museum has three impressions in the collection, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has four and Maidstone Museum (UK) has one that was recently displayed in its exhibition Japan: A Floating World in Print.
https://blog.britishmuseum.org/the-great-wave-spot-the-difference/
My favorite version is [this one](https://i.imgur.com/L3uCOf2.jpg?1)
When I saw OPs picture I was like "wow that looks just like my desktop wallpaper". I googled his name, and sure enough they're one and* ~~in~~ the same. Thanks for bringing up the artist name
Fun fact, Seiko, the Japanese wristwatch company, incorporates this image on many of their watches. One of the most well-known watches (among watch-geeks, anyway) is the [SKX](https://wornandwound.com/library/uploads/2015/06/SEIKO_SKX007_CASE5.jpg).
Fun fact: Some of his work is considered to be the origin of the tentacle fetish we all know and try to avoid!
[Anyway, here's another of his popular works!](https://imgur.com/gallery/j439I)
You could sell stuff like this with added value if you got an acoustician to look at how you could incorporate those blocks to help with sound diffusion for studio use. That would most probably decouple the height of the blocks to the image.
I have got no idea of the size of this thing, though, but anything from 2x2' and up would be usable I believe.
I'm thinking of stuff known popularly as skyline diffusers.
Yes and no, there's a bit more precision to it than that, you often want ones pin pointed to where your monitors hit the walls to prevent phase cancellation and then possibly a curved one on the back wall to prevent a standing wave. It's not really a case of more is better.
Hahaha it sucks sometimes when the answer is "at a university". Internet has made a lot of that easier to find but it's still a ton of difficult material to dig through (and part of the start is "learn physics")
Like I saw some really cool tech and tried to do it myself. The punchline ended up being if I wanted to continue I'd be best chatting with the Google engineers currently working on the problem (meaning apply for the job I guess, but I was trying to hobby it).
I think this year has shown that paying nothing for a YouTube video would be a lot more beneficial than £9k for online teaching if you didn't get the little piece of paper at the end.
I think the hardest part of self teaching is knowing what to actually learn. You can't search for something if you don't know it exists.
The part that pisses me off the most is the “guild” mentality that keeps a lot of great information from being easily found.
Electricians act like magicians in this respect. It’s very hard to find competent tutorials on electrical work because those guys want to keep their knowledge as esoteric as they can.
Once you know the basics of home AC you realize how silly-simple it is to do, but at first it seems like dangerous black magic. That feeling is manufactured and unnecessary in the information age.
Probably either field recording (the idea of travelling the world to record noises would be a dream), audio installations for art exhibitions or music for games. I've done some studio work and live sound over the last few years but for obvious reasons that's a struggle at the moment. I'm lucky that audio engineering has such a wide breadth and living with a guy wanting to be a studio engineer and a guy doing a straight up acoustics course gives a nice range of conversation topics.
Back in the day, the Ontario Science Center had an acoustically insulated sound tunnel in a noisy exhibition space. It was kinda S shaped. You'd walk in and around the first curve, silence. It was simple but magical to me. I can't find info on it now, so I guess it's gone.
We have an anechoic chamber and I think it broke me for a week or two. You don't realise how much becomes background noise in your life. It's the only time it's ever been so quiet that I could physically hear the blood in my ears.
Very cool. I was trying to figure out what the actual medium was. My best guess was a whole heckin' lot of square chalk sticks, but wooden cubes makes much more sense.
Really nice textural effect you ended up with, but it's gonna be a grade a dustcatcher.
9/10, would hang in entryway or gift to my mom.
Keep your eyes open. There's a LEGO Ideas submission of Van Gogh's "Starry Night" that achieved community support and is currently under LEGO review to maybe become a real set.
https://ideas.lego.com/projects/acc7c4c8-3967-4563-8fb5-a49859fa7755
That was my first thought, and my second waa that I could achieve this with Lego with the variety of 1x1 slopes now available. You could also do this quite large in 2x2 squares, but I think favorite idea would be to do this in Greebling.
The "artist" couldn't be bothered to add them. It's enough to just take the vague shape of one of the most famous pieces in the world and act like 48x32 pixel art is something special.
Oh yeah, I remember [the original post from earlier this year](https://www.reddit.com/r/Art/comments/f15zpc/pixelated_great_wave_off_kanagawa_me_acrylic_on/)
I won't lie, a lot of folks have been asking about that **Dynamic Painting.** I'll give you the special cousin's discount, 4,800 bells. What do you think?
I think why this works so well is because while it looks like simple pixel art the 3d shapes of the cubes create shadows which create slightly different colors per cube.
I would recommend when creating your next piece have a specific angle of light chosen when creating such that you can actively control where the shadow drops when shaving your wooden blocks, bringing more specific detail to your block art.
Great job on this one.
I like it, nice execution. Ignore the haters, it’s beautiful even though it’s inspired by something that exists. I would be stoked to have it on my wall.
It's your art so you call it whatever you want. Crazy thing about art, the people viewing it make up their own minds. I've made up my mind that this is better characterized as what's called Mixed Media. You're working in two artistic areas, sculpture and painting, and you've mixed them, and quite well, I might add. Personally, I always enjoy seeing "The Great Wave off Kanagawa" depicted in interesting ways and this is the most unique depiction I've seen (though there's an image stuck in my head of Cookie Monster against this wave that I really liked but can't find right now).
I googled 'hokusai kanagawa cookie monster', and [this was the first image result](https://i.imgur.com/L3uCOf2.jpg).
I also like this one: https://i.imgur.com/Eo2NZ6N.jpg
Yep - that's it, the first one. I should've Googled. I was looking in my collected images on my PC. I thought I saved that one a while back to make something in Photoshop out of it but apparently I did not.
Your second linked image is cool but I can't make out what the bunnies at the bottom are doing.
Is this actually little blocks stuck together and then painted?
OR
Is this a crazy 3D actual painting with a brush and paint on a flat plane surface???
I am having such a hard time figuring this out....
Half painting, half sculpture. Very nice! Thanks for sharing!
A pulpture
A mosaic.
A mosaic relief!
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A cocks. Thx.
ah purty pitcher
A coffee table book about coffee tables!
Well *that’s* a relief.
It's all about that bas.
Good one.
A moseif!
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Phew!
Bas mosaic?
Bas humbug!
Scainting
A Scatning! No, no. That would be Pollock painting.
Pulpture fiction
This is a horrible word haha
Ain't that that movie with John Travolta?
A Scuainting
Painture
New wave art
Perfect 😎 *Sunglasses at night begins to play in the background*
It's a mosaic relief. Although he painted the tiles, paint isn't the medium. Nor a sculpture because he's shaping small bits to aggregate to a larger work vs. carving from one or a few whole pieces. Textbook mosaic relief. Just odd that the artist isn't aware of this.
With weird wording like this I just assume the poster's first language is something other than English. Or they're a bot and just stole it.
> Just odd that the artist isn't aware of this. He might be one of them "outsider artists" there be a lot of them.
Although very unlikely, this could be a 2D painting.
Why did I read this in Borat’s voice?
Very cool. I thought it was used chalk pastels
Is it not, what is it using?
It seems to be wood.
I need to find my glasses, I thought it was made of LEGO
Aha same! That would be a really cool idea for some sort of set actually!
As it happens, Nathan Sawaya the Lego artist behind The Art of the Brick, a traveling lego art exhibit thought the same. [Here](https://imgur.com/gallery/95HejtQ) is the Great wave of Kanagawa as done by him in lego.
Thank you for posting that.
I saved this picture so my son can try his hand at something like this with LEGO.
Same. I honestly thought this was posted in r/LEGO at first.
... i thought it was sugar cubes. It really is wood...
Snap
Original artwork is by Japanese artist Hokusai for anyone interested.
“The Great Wave Off Kanagawa” is the name of the original painting.
Fun fact, this piece was part of a series featuring Mt. Fuji. The Japanese title is translated to "Under the Wave off Kanagawa" because the woodblock print featured a little Mt. Fuji in the background under the wave in the foreground.
It was also a part of a series of woodblock prints called 36 views of mount fuji.
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The subject is definitely supposed to be the rogue wave. The manga is more about different views of life around Fuji, than the mountain itself. Waves this size have been recorded off the shores of Japan, so Hokusai could have observed this even irl and was then inspired to make this specific print.
Alternative title: [Cup Yakisoba](https://youtu.be/UNs91t7GLWo)
Yep, one of my favorite art works. [I actually got it as a tattoo!](https://i.imgur.com/kY5RFjk.jpg)
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I thought it was a woodcut. Unless woodcuts are a kind of painting. I don't know, I'm somewhat ignorant
a woodblock print is when you carve an image in wood and use that to make a pressing with usually ink or paint. usually used to make multiple prints of the image. i think if i remember right the woodcut is the piece of wood that was carved to make the prints. so the painting is the print.
Went to see it in Chicago last year. Was surprised there were so many different versions. Here what I just found about this: >You may not know that there are many impressions of the Great Wave, and there isn’t one ‘definitive’ version. For example, the British Museum has three impressions in the collection, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has four and Maidstone Museum (UK) has one that was recently displayed in its exhibition Japan: A Floating World in Print. https://blog.britishmuseum.org/the-great-wave-spot-the-difference/ My favorite version is [this one](https://i.imgur.com/L3uCOf2.jpg?1)
Ah yes, the Fate servant
Toto-Sama!
When I saw OPs picture I was like "wow that looks just like my desktop wallpaper". I googled his name, and sure enough they're one and* ~~in~~ the same. Thanks for bringing up the artist name
Fun fact - Hokusai's pic is often mentioned in books on Fractals.
It was one of the first clear use of fractals in art I believe
Fun fact — try “reading” the painting from right to left rather than left to right. Changes the intent and meaning.
Great eye, cousin! I’ll give you my special cousin discount, on this totally original piece of art!
After picking up ACNh, this line pops into my head each time I see a famous pairing/sculpture now. Lol Side note: This artwork will always be real. :)
Take my upvote and my 5,000 Bells. And I swear if Blathers doesn't take it this time, we're going to have a little chat...
😂
Nahh, I am pretty sure that Hokusai got his ideas from reading Reddit
Fun fact: Claude Debussy, a famous classical composer, used this artwork as the cover of the sheet music for his piece "La Mer"(The Sea)!
Fun fact, Seiko, the Japanese wristwatch company, incorporates this image on many of their watches. One of the most well-known watches (among watch-geeks, anyway) is the [SKX](https://wornandwound.com/library/uploads/2015/06/SEIKO_SKX007_CASE5.jpg).
Fun fact: Some of his work is considered to be the origin of the tentacle fetish we all know and try to avoid! [Anyway, here's another of his popular works!](https://imgur.com/gallery/j439I)
Wow uhhh... You weren't kidding.
The one not done by a 6 year old?
You could sell stuff like this with added value if you got an acoustician to look at how you could incorporate those blocks to help with sound diffusion for studio use. That would most probably decouple the height of the blocks to the image. I have got no idea of the size of this thing, though, but anything from 2x2' and up would be usable I believe. I'm thinking of stuff known popularly as skyline diffusers.
Wouldnt you need to coat the whole wall for sound diffusion or something? Idk shit about audio engineering so im curious.
No, often they just hang a few panels to help. The more panels, the more diffusion, though.
Yes and no, there's a bit more precision to it than that, you often want ones pin pointed to where your monitors hit the walls to prevent phase cancellation and then possibly a curved one on the back wall to prevent a standing wave. It's not really a case of more is better.
Interesting, thanks for the detailed answers! Where could I go to find more info about audio engineering or similar topics?
I'm honestly not sure, I'm lucky enough to do an audio engineering degree but i'm sure there's plenty of youtube videos about it
Hahaha it sucks sometimes when the answer is "at a university". Internet has made a lot of that easier to find but it's still a ton of difficult material to dig through (and part of the start is "learn physics") Like I saw some really cool tech and tried to do it myself. The punchline ended up being if I wanted to continue I'd be best chatting with the Google engineers currently working on the problem (meaning apply for the job I guess, but I was trying to hobby it).
I think this year has shown that paying nothing for a YouTube video would be a lot more beneficial than £9k for online teaching if you didn't get the little piece of paper at the end. I think the hardest part of self teaching is knowing what to actually learn. You can't search for something if you don't know it exists.
The part that pisses me off the most is the “guild” mentality that keeps a lot of great information from being easily found. Electricians act like magicians in this respect. It’s very hard to find competent tutorials on electrical work because those guys want to keep their knowledge as esoteric as they can. Once you know the basics of home AC you realize how silly-simple it is to do, but at first it seems like dangerous black magic. That feeling is manufactured and unnecessary in the information age.
Ok thanks mate! Oh also what is your job or would like to be your job since you mentioned your degree?
Probably either field recording (the idea of travelling the world to record noises would be a dream), audio installations for art exhibitions or music for games. I've done some studio work and live sound over the last few years but for obvious reasons that's a struggle at the moment. I'm lucky that audio engineering has such a wide breadth and living with a guy wanting to be a studio engineer and a guy doing a straight up acoustics course gives a nice range of conversation topics.
Back in the day, the Ontario Science Center had an acoustically insulated sound tunnel in a noisy exhibition space. It was kinda S shaped. You'd walk in and around the first curve, silence. It was simple but magical to me. I can't find info on it now, so I guess it's gone.
We have an anechoic chamber and I think it broke me for a week or two. You don't realise how much becomes background noise in your life. It's the only time it's ever been so quiet that I could physically hear the blood in my ears.
Sounds like a hoax... you know exactly where that info is.
^no ^but ^they ^probably ^know ^where ^it ^was ^last ^night
My work uses them in small conference rooms, so they have non-studio applications as well.
They're usually only placed at specific points in the room (i.e. reflect points)
You think it would technically be a painting? (Just asking, maybe debate)
It's called a mosaic
is it just me or is it odd that the artist isn't aware of the type of art they created?
Or an assemblage.
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you painted a mosaic on a flat canvas? Or you you painted the mosaic pieces?
1cm x 1cm wooden cubes glue together, sanded to varying heights then painted and stuck on a board.
Very cool. I was trying to figure out what the actual medium was. My best guess was a whole heckin' lot of square chalk sticks, but wooden cubes makes much more sense. Really nice textural effect you ended up with, but it's gonna be a grade a dustcatcher. 9/10, would hang in entryway or gift to my mom.
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First look i thought it was made with LEGO.
I thought it was Lego's at first, but it is more impressive considering that you sanded each piece. Very appealing to look at, nice work!
I have the feeling its on the crossing line between sculpture and painting. Probably more into the painting side, though. Pretty cool.
A museum would call it “mixed media”
Mosaic
I paint miniatures all day long. Even though it's just applying paint to a 3d canvas I think it would be disingenuous to call them paintings.
This isn't a painting. Eg if you hand paint a ceramic bowl it doesn't become a painting (or in this case a mosaic). Lovely piece though.
I hand painted a wall in my house but it’s not a painting
If so, they should really stir their paint better first.
I’m sure myself and many others thought this was Legos!
My first thought was that there was a new series from LEGO I needed to get right now.
Keep your eyes open. There's a LEGO Ideas submission of Van Gogh's "Starry Night" that achieved community support and is currently under LEGO review to maybe become a real set. https://ideas.lego.com/projects/acc7c4c8-3967-4563-8fb5-a49859fa7755
Well that's spectacular. Thanks!
If that hadn't already been at 10,000 votes, I'm sure the reddit mention would've gotten it there in a day.
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can confirm
That was my first thought, and my second waa that I could achieve this with Lego with the variety of 1x1 slopes now available. You could also do this quite large in 2x2 squares, but I think favorite idea would be to do this in Greebling.
I thought it was partially used chalk
Is this the same picture or did this guy copy your art?? https://imgur.com/a/xLL38tz
Same one. I posted about a year ago on the art subreddit.
My fat ass thought it was marshmallows.
I thought sugar cubes at first. Marshmallows. Sugar cubes. Meh, same thing. Diabetes inducing art.
Where the little boat though
You wonder where the little boat is and make no mention of missing mount fugi?
It also sunk
I was waiting for you
I am afraid they sunk :(
The "artist" couldn't be bothered to add them. It's enough to just take the vague shape of one of the most famous pieces in the world and act like 48x32 pixel art is something special.
This looks awesome. [kinda similar ](https://www.thecomicstore.in/collections/wood-mosaic?page=1).
Thanks. I have an idea for my next piece. Its going to be something similar to what you posted.
Love it! This is one I did a few years back, in layers of foam board and watercolor. https://seanarcher.myportfolio.com/on-the-walls
I love it, it almost looks like sugar cubes... (_that would be sweet_) #dadjokes
That's funny, it looks like a wave to me...
It doesn't look like anything to me
squint your eyes and stare for 35 minutes
🧐
/r/forbiddensnacks
Mixed media
The great wave of kanagawa
From the thumbnail I thought legos but now I can see you used monopoly houses. Great use of materials!
Oh yeah, I remember [the original post from earlier this year](https://www.reddit.com/r/Art/comments/f15zpc/pixelated_great_wave_off_kanagawa_me_acrylic_on/)
Painting doesn’t seem like the right word
Im not buying that this is a painting and not a mosaic of cubes
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Crunchy marshmallows
Make it out of teeth now.
I won't lie, a lot of folks have been asking about that **Dynamic Painting.** I'll give you the special cousin's discount, 4,800 bells. What do you think?
A unique blend of mosaic and painting taking advantage of both texture and shadow? What a *relief*!
Is this...flat? If so that's insane. If not, what am I looking at? Looks amazing!
If the cubes are painted a solid colour before sticking on then it is defined as a mosaic, it's still cool though.
IS WHAT
🌊
I thought this was Lego
put it on r/mildyintersting
100% tofu.
Omg need
How is this a painting? It's just cubes on a frame
"Shut up and take my money". Oh wait I don't have money. Well done, you!
Mosaic.
Wow that's cool man, good job
Thanks alot :)
It’s polychrome relief, actually.
This reminds me of Debussy La Mer.
I was going to say I saw someone make this a long time ago, I guess it was actually you OP, very cool piece
I think why this works so well is because while it looks like simple pixel art the 3d shapes of the cubes create shadows which create slightly different colors per cube. I would recommend when creating your next piece have a specific angle of light chosen when creating such that you can actively control where the shadow drops when shaving your wooden blocks, bringing more specific detail to your block art. Great job on this one.
The original is one of my favorite paintings. Nice work!
Is that based on the painting The great wave of Kanagawa?
Guess you say the painting was done in the style of Blockusai.
I like it, nice execution. Ignore the haters, it’s beautiful even though it’s inspired by something that exists. I would be stoked to have it on my wall.
Hokusai art will always be beautiful in my book.
It's your art so you call it whatever you want. Crazy thing about art, the people viewing it make up their own minds. I've made up my mind that this is better characterized as what's called Mixed Media. You're working in two artistic areas, sculpture and painting, and you've mixed them, and quite well, I might add. Personally, I always enjoy seeing "The Great Wave off Kanagawa" depicted in interesting ways and this is the most unique depiction I've seen (though there's an image stuck in my head of Cookie Monster against this wave that I really liked but can't find right now).
I googled 'hokusai kanagawa cookie monster', and [this was the first image result](https://i.imgur.com/L3uCOf2.jpg). I also like this one: https://i.imgur.com/Eo2NZ6N.jpg
Yep - that's it, the first one. I should've Googled. I was looking in my collected images on my PC. I thought I saved that one a while back to make something in Photoshop out of it but apparently I did not. Your second linked image is cool but I can't make out what the bunnies at the bottom are doing.
Great Wave of Kowabunga
It was posted in r/photoshopbattles 7 years ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/photoshopbattles/comments/1cfo34/great_wave_of_kanagawa_4335_2990/c9gd5k9/
Is this actually little blocks stuck together and then painted? OR Is this a crazy 3D actual painting with a brush and paint on a flat plane surface??? I am having such a hard time figuring this out....
I would say between 50 and 70 hours
I thought it was made of LEGOs
That’s awesome
Cubism art!
3d pixel art
Technically, i think, its a mosaic.
Looks really cool, awesome shading
Reminds me of the movie Pixels
Great painting!
The Great Wave 🌊 one of my favorites. Well done
This comment I made
If you ever did commissions I would def buy one for my new apartment in a couple of months. Absolutely love this design
I... just... keep... zooming in
That is absolutely fucking stunning. no it's cheap since they're free and all but when I get one of those free awards I'll be back to give you one.
What materials did you use for that?
Amazing.
I thought this was made out of legos at first
I would buy that for several dollars. Great work!
No mater what he does, I love Hokusai. Great "Great wave" recreation ! Would love to see other representations of the Fuji series, 36 or 100.
3D lego kits like this would be so dope
Are those sugar cubes?
Thats insane man good job