Project #3 Haruna Takahama and Tiger Paintings

Haruna Takahama is a Japanese artist.  He also teaches at the Tokyo University of Art and Design.  Takahama often paints animals.  This project is based on his tiger paintings.  To see more of Takahama's work go to https://www.haruna-takahama.com/.

The tiger paintings are very detailed and realistic except that the stripes are multicolored on a metallic gold coat.  The backgrounds of the tiger paintings often have bamboo in them but sometimes have textile patterns or flowers or Japanese fans. 

You will need a good photograph of a tiger to use as a reference image. You can draw the tiger from the photo or trace the contour lines of the tiger.  See Project #5 for transferring contour lines. 

Decide if you want the painting to be vertical or horizontal. Draw or transfer the contour lines. 

Some students chose to paint the tiger with black stripes and others with multicolor stripes.  All of them painted the background of the tiger's coat an acrylic metallic gold. For the gold areas we painted an underlayer of acrylic yellow gold (not metallic) first and the metallic gold acrylic on top of the yellow gold after it dried.  All of the other colors are painted with watercolor. 

The painting below was a collaboration.  It began as my demo example and was finished by a student.

Some students chose to create a bamboo patterned background using real bamboo leaves as a stencil.  See Project #4 Bamboo Leaf Resist for examples and instructions on the bamboo background.  Other students designed original backgrounds.  I especially like the clock background which is a reference to Mr. Roger's television show in this work in progress.  

This student chose to put a party hat on her tiger because the multicolored stripes reminded us of confetti.  

Painting the stripes multicolored is not easy. I recommend this project for students 8 and up because of the difficulty of drawing/transferring the tiger and painting the multicolored stripes but I have did have 6 year olds in a group of mixed age students create a beautiful paintings and no difficulty with any part of the process. For more advanced painters this is a great exercise for acrylics or oils and gold leaf.

Vocabulary: contour lines, metallic, stencil, textile patterns, underlayer, work in progress