Yukishiro Takani is a brilliant painter from Japan, best known for his mech paintings for the Macross franchise.  He has also produced art for Gundam, Nausicaa, Star Wars, Metal Gear, and many other franchises involving large scale mech and robots.  He also did some of the best box model painting ever produced for Fujimi’s military models, more specifically his tank paintings.

 

His work is defined with large broad strokes chiseled down to small calligraphic strokes that imply the details.  He does not render his illustrations to death, keeping a loose atmospheric feeling to the works.  His athletic approach works very well with motion, movement, dense smoke, fog, mud, and the way he treated his hard surface painting, hacking away with a very dry brush approach.

The paintings are very large, big enough to get the entire arm involved, and done with thinned acrylic and poster paint built up in dozens, if not hundreds of layers.  The method is the typical fast-paced comic book painting approach indicative of the 1980’s, building up layers of paint starting with the darkest values thinly applied and layering more opaque values as the forms are developed.

 

 

Seeing these in person really helps one understand how they were made.  Small paintings cannot be done with the same kind of loose, effortless strokes.  The surface needs to be large and the brushes should be used a little so their strokes do not default to the store-bought shape when heavily soaked in pigment.

I imagine that Takani could make anything look amazing regardless of its size, its just in him to be that energetic in his work.  To see works done by someone so passionate about what they make is just pure inspiration.  Every brush stroke exudes a confident childlike curiosity bound in confident calligraphic energy.

Enjoy the craftsmanship and go be inspired.