Happy Thursday! This issue of the Animation Obsessive newsletter is a little different from the norm. We’re looking at a small guide to painting — written and drawn by Hayao Miyazaki.
If you’ve seen Miyazaki’s watercolor works, like the one above, you already know how amazing they are. He has the power to turn scribbly pencil lines and splotches of color into vibrant sketches that feel actively, restlessly alive. He’s been drawing this way since at least the ‘70s — he’d already done it for years by the time of Future Boy Conan (1978).
So, when Miyazaki took a moment to describe his methods, people were naturally excited.
Back in the 2000s, the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka began selling a “sketch set” with an unbeatable hook: it gave you Miyazaki’s art tools. Plus, it came with a little foldout in which Miyazaki explained how to use watercolors, and how he uses them.
If you can find an unopened one, the original kit contains a pencil, a brush, a pencil sharpener, a sketchbook and a palette — alongside 24 Holbein watercolor paints selected by Miyazaki. Children and people brand new to watercolors were the target audience. The guide by Miyazaki is funny, friendly and self-deprecating, with a number of tips aimed at beginners.
But he also sheds light on his own, idiosyncratic way of working, which is why this foldout has spread online over the years. The classic Ghibli Blog was sharing pictures as far back as 2015. Today, we’re going through a rough new English version of it — and seeing what secrets Miyazaki reveals within.
What Miyazaki makes clear throughout the guide is that he is, proudly, a cheapskate who isn’t fussy about tools. He looks for reliability and convenience. His pitch for Holbein paints is just that they’re “reasonably priced and a little goes a long way.”
(It brings to mind the attitude of Studio Ghibli’s famous painter Kazuo Oga, who’s known to favor low-grade paints in his work.)
In his notes, Miyazaki purposely leans into sounding old and stuck in his ways. He rants about how he’s painted with nothing else for 40 years, how easy and cost-effective his tools are — and then he undermines himself by suggesting that, really, this is all he knows how to do.
Even so, the approach he outlines feels real, lived-in and practical. He mentions singeing the tips of his brushes with a lighter to eliminate stray bristles (and jokes that he doesn’t stress about burning too much). He recommends squeezing paint onto the palette and leaving it there, to avoid the hassle of messing with the tubes. And he shows how he lays out paints to minimize cleaning.
One of his most fascinating notes deals with his pencil sketching. Drawing freely and “scratchily” (シャカシャカ), he treats each line as part of the final piece. There’s no eraser involved — and, understandably, no erase
