Hokusai: Birds, Flowers, and Nature Coloring Book

The Japanese woodblock artist Katsushika Hokusai, who lived from 1760 to 1849, had a great influence on many European artists, in particular the Impressionist painters Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Hokusai started sketching when he was five or six years old, and he became an apprentice wood engraver at the age of fourteen. At eighteen, he went to work in a master artist's studio, and a year later he published his first prints. Even though Hokusai had a very long career as an artist, he wrote that it wasn t until the age of seventy-two that he 'finally apprehended something of the true quality of birds, animals, insects, fish, and of the vital nature of grasses and trees.' The woodblocks included in this coloring book are mostly from two untitled series of Hokusai's prints called Large Flowers and Small Flowers.

Pomegranate's Hokusai coloring book is 8 1/2 x 11 inches and features 22 drawings based on floral woodblock prints (48 pages total). Coloring pages are blank on the back so they can be cut out and displayed. Each illustration is reproduced in a small, color version of the original artwork and as a full-page black line drawing. Published by PomegranateKids, an imprint of Pomegranate Communications. ISBN 978-0-7649-5522-8. This item is CPSIA compliant.