Manga artist creates eccentric illustrations based on the works of Gauguin, Gucci, Michelangelo and other great masters

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Hirohiko Araki is a renowned manga artist who draws inspiration from a variety of sources, from the work of Gauguin to fashion illustrations by Antonio Lopez. He created his own vibrant, unique and exciting style. His work spans decades, but there is one thing that stays the same as he hones his craft - an unquenchable passion for pop culture, art and fashion. Trying to bring something new to his inimitable art world, Araki has created a brand that is memorable and eccentric.

There are many misconceptions about what manga really is, with definitions ranging from black and white to purely Japanese comics, all done in a very specific style. The closest definition includes any printed animation media in Japan. Manga was not created as a kind of all-encompassing style until Osamu Tezuka's Godfather of Manga developed new methods and changed established genres with works such as Astro Boy and The Jungle Emperor Leo in the 1960s. …

Most people outside Japan and many within the country adhere to the latter definition and believe that manga is a form of media that is instantly recognizable with just one look. Manga artists, or manga artists these days, have so many different styles that it would be ignorant to try to define manga strictly according to some of its more famous stereotypes, such as big eyes, hair sticking out in different directions, and mega strange proportions. There is a manga that does still combine all three attributes to some extent, but using them as a basis for defining what a manga is would discredit artists like Takehiko Inoue, Sakamoto Shinichi and of course Hirohiko. Araki.

Hirohiko Araki is a popular mangaka in Japan, best known for his ongoing work and the great opus JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, which began publication in 1986 but debuted in the early 1980s. He draws his inspiration from classical painting and sculpture techniques, color manipulation by Paul Gauguin, Western pop culture and fashion to create an engaging world and characters.

Born in Sendai, Japan on June 7, 1960, he drew his first manga while in fourth grade. After talking to a friend who then praised his work, he thought it might be worth considering taking up manga as a future career.

In the sixties, the pursuit of becoming a manga artist was something that people looked down on as it was a far from familiar career path. So, Araki started doing his art behind his parents' backs and eventually submitted his first job in high school - it was vehemently rejected along with many other works. He eventually gained recognition for his Gun Poker one-shot, finishing second in a manga competition known as the Tezuka Awards.

Despite his debut, Hirohiko knew he needed to create a unique and distinctive style if he wanted to truly stand out in the industry. The Gun Poker style was very characteristic of the 1980s and lacked the overarching uniqueness that the aspiring mangaka hoped to achieve later. After the early emergence of manga as a style, something akin to the industry standard for how genres and works should look in certain publications has emerged. Hirohiko's decision to develop his own style was sensible, as his work could get lost in a sea of repetitive works, regardless of the story his art told.

Paul Gauguin was a French painter best known for his post-impressionist work and his help in creating the primitive style. But in 1888 he declared himself a synthetist. Synthetism was known for its flat areas of color and bold outlines, which can be seen in all of Hirohiko's later work. During the lecture, Araki stated that he had loved Paul since childhood and ended up using his Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works as inspiration for his later works. What inspired Araki the most in Gauguin's work was his use of color blocking and the vivid use of unrealistic color. He appreciated the idea that the ground could be pink and the trees could be blue (a trend seen in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure).

Hirohiko mimics Gauguin's use of not only a large flat color space, but also maintains a very limited palette, similar to Vision After Sermon. Araki contrasts too warm and cold with each other to make the themes of the work popular. In addition, both plays have a curved structure created by humans, while the mangaka prefers to place this curved group of characters in the background, Gauguin puts them in front and in the center. Also, they both use similar techniques to break up the image and make sure the flat color isn't too overpowering.

Gauguin places a tree moving diagonally across the frame to create contrast and perspective. Araki uses a similar technique, alternating green strokes of what looks like grass throughout, trying to break up the orange color and create a sense of distance and line between the earth and the sky.

Hirohiko himself has stated that his main influence on the overall appearance of the characters he is working on comes from two main locations. Tetsuo Hara's Fist of the Pole Star is an 80s anime that premiered three years before the release of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.

Fist of the North Star is a fantasy-themed manga adorned with large, muscular, hyper-masculine bodies. Araki is absolutely versed in anatomy, and much of the way he draws his characters is reminiscent of the sculptural work of Michelangelo di Lodovico di Leonardo di Buonarroti Simoni.

When watching a slow motion video of how Araki created the aforementioned painting, there were many aspects of his process that stood out, but what's most interesting is his reference material. He used magazines, his own hand-drawn reference material, and an art book titled Michelangelo: The Complete Works of Lutz Heusinger.

Using these sources, he was able to achieve precise and perfect proportions through research on Michelangelo's body and the inclusion of other outside influences such as fashion photo shoots and illustrations. Araki's versatile advice and inspiration has allowed him to create a unique style of his own that will impress manga lovers around the world.

Hirohiko's work is not only stylistically unique, it is alive in almost every aspect. Most of his illustrations have a real basis, despite how otherworldly it may seem at times. The overall liveliness of the work in which he creates comes from the use of culturally significant reference materials as well as those mentioned earlier. It is Araki's love for fashion that allows his work to be as realistic as possible.

In interviews and even simply analyzing his work of the 80s, one can discover his love for Versace, Moschino and his active use of photo shoots in Vogue magazine. The poses of high fashion models tend to have unrealistic, otherworldly and even awkward fragments, but they still retain the natural gestures required to incorporate them into Araki's work. Haute couture poses lack the day-to-day sense of candor that allows Araki's images to appear as they are.

In 2013, GUCCI asked Araki to collaborate on their spring fashion collection, and it was called GUCCI X JOJO. Around the world, GUCCI stores showcased illustrations of some of his most beloved characters from across the Jojo brand. As in the images above, JoJo's characters were dressed in GUCCI from head to toe: clothes, bags, and shoes advertising a particular season.

By the way, in February of the same year, Araki's one-off manga “Fly to the skies with Gucci, Jolene” was published in the Japanese women's fashion magazine Spur, in which the protagonist sported clothes from Frida Giannini's 2013 cruise collection, and also did illustrations for window advertising shops. It's easy to say that Araki's love of fashion led him to such opportunities, and it was inevitable that the world saw this collaboration on the scale it was.

In addition to all this, he drew inspiration not only from clothes and the models themselves, but also from their illustrations. Araki draws on the work of many, but one of the most mentioned artists was Tony Viramontes, a fashion illustrator who took the 70s and 80s by storm, working with Versace, Chanel, Valentino, Paloma Picasso and photographers hired by Vogue. His work lacked the traditional take on fashion illustration, but had the same splash, bold lines and color that would normally not be seen. He used abstraction to the limit, taking the lessons of his mentor Antonio Lopez and stretching them to the maximum until they were almost unrecognizable.

His more classic work, The Ideal Woman, adheres to principles similar to synthetism from the very beginning of his career, which in turn inspired Araki to create a series of works.

Hirohiko used Tony's later work as well as fashion magazines. Viramontes was known for making models take interesting and unconventional poses, which made them perfect for JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Araki was able to masterfully embody Viramontes' gestures, presenting his work in a new light.

Antonio Lopez's fashion illustrations also greatly inspired Hirohiko's work thanks to the chic nature of his work and how fashionable it was. He and his colleague Juan Ramos were the arbiters of new and innovative design from the 60s to the 80s, helping usher in a new era of fashion. Much of what Araki used Lopez's illustrations for was their general poses and fashion, not necessarily color or style, as he did with Tony Viramontes. His illustrations could be seen in Fashion and The Times, allowing Araki to use his work as inspiration for some of the most iconic covers of the time. His illustrations were famous throughout the fashion world from Paris to Tokyo and New York, and were extremely recognizable at the time.

Thanks to his quick mind and desire to evolve, drawing inspiration, improving skills, the manga artist was able to easily combine Lopez's design with his own style and a few of his own changes to create an amazing world that hardly anyone can repeat.

And in continuation of the topic, read about Kay Sage - an artist whose extraordinary works were inspired by Freud's dreams and not only.