Customer Reviews

Sketches from Japan

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There is a long tradition among artists and writers of maintaining a journal to record observations and impressions. Many writers use journals to write informally, often spontaneously, to describe real or imagined people, places, and events. Artists and naturalists as well fill sketchbooks with both words and images to help focus their observations. Frank Ching, the author of this sketchbook, not only records the optical reality of what is seen; he uses these drawings as a means of gaining understanding, insight, and perhaps even inspiration. His drawings stimulate the mind to think and can even make visible aspects that cannot be seen by the naked eye, or captured on film by a camera.

Frank Ching made most of the drawings in this sketchbook in or around O-okayama, a town southwest of downtown Tokyo, where the Tokyo Institute of Technology is located. The subject matter ranges from street scenes to traditional construction details, from temples and their sacred precincts to stimulating juxtapositions of old and new. He has successfully captured the sights, sounds and even smells of vibrant metropolis Tokyo, enabling the reader to feel the humid heat of the day or the cool rainy mist that fell as he drew. In addition, there are scenes sketched during the author's brief excursion to Kyoto and the mountain village of Takayama

All the drawings were executed in a pure contour-line technique with a fountain pen and black ink. There is a crispness and finality to an inkline that is both daunting and exciting. The process not only fostered the careful observation of details; it also required seeing how they fit into the larger framework and pattern of shapes, and noting which details could be omitted. The shape and extent of the white spaces are as important to a composition as what is delineated.

Francis D.K. Ching (1943- ) completed a month in the spring of 1990 as a visiting scholar at the Tokyo Institute of Technology which he spent producing this sketchbook.

Every fan of drawing, everyone who has ever traveled with a sketchbook will enjoy this little collection of his travel sketches from Japan, and this will delight those already acquainted with the ravishing beauty of Francis Ching's architectural drawings. Ching's other books are analytical drawings, showing architectural detail and forms with a controlled, disciplined line that architects know as the Ching style - contour drawings with a hierarchy of line emphasizing the outlines of figures. Ching's freehand sketches are a remarkably free riff on the drawing approach seen in his other work, as if he finally took his tie off and improvised a solo.

These are predominantly contour drawings. Tone is used for contrast of focus, or emphasis of a figure to its ground, but tone is rarely used to define a volume. The control of line is extraordinary, and the variety of marks interesting. But the power of the drawings often comes from his orchestration of many contrasting textures, shapes, and details.

Ching has remarkable control of representing a detail and describing its place as a part of a whole: there is always clarity in the disorder, even showing the exuberant chaos of telephone and power lines criss scrossing over the busy street. One can almost feel the mist, smell the sounds and hear the bustling noise on the street. The crowds of people are convincing, and he has no fear of quickly sketching a whole cluster of motorcycles. Looking at Ching's drawings feels like taking lessons in vitality, in visual selection, and in how a talented draughtsman really requires an editing, selective eye.

The drawings are unfortunately interrupted by a graphic drawing analysis of the Centennial Hall of the Tokyo Institute of Technology. There's nothing particularly wrong with the analysis but it is nowhere near as compelling as the drawings, and also this sort of formal drawing analysis is covered well in Ching's other works. This analysis breaks the tone of the rest of the books, and it's a relief when the analysis ends and the exploration of Japan's urban life begins again.