The painter most like you

You are most like Hokusai

Even after finishing something, you say 'not there yet'

Katsushika Hokusai, Under the Wave off Kanagawa (Kanagawa oki nami ura), also known as The Great Wave, from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjūrokkei), ca. 1830–32

Under the Wave off Kanagawa (Kanagawa oki nami ura), also known as The Great Wave, from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjūrokkei) · ca. 1830–32

Your nature

You are a lifelong learner

This is a playful reading of your nature, not a scientific personality test.
The grey lines below come from Hokusai's real life and work.

Your strength
Your persistence is unusual. Even at things you already do well, you want to do better.
Hokusai kept painting even after he turned eighty.
When you shine
You shine when you take something new and make it your own.
He took up Western perspective as well and used it in his prints.
What wears you out
Feeling that you are standing still is what wears you down most.
Before he died, he is said to have remarked that with five more years he could have become a true painter.
How you work
You keep your hands moving a little every day. You tend to fill whole sketchbooks.
He worked on many kinds of things, from brush paintings to designs for woodblock prints and book illustrations.
With other people
You tend to share what you know freely with the people around you.
Hokusai had many pupils, and his daughter Ōi also worked beside him as a painter.
How you rest
Even on days off your hands itch. Looking for new subjects on a walk is your rest.
Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji shows Mount Fuji seen from many places and in different seasons.

Why Hokusai?

You are a lifelong learner. Hokusai lived to nearly ninety and published Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji when he was about seventy. Under the Wave off Kanagawa is one sheet from that series.

He drew almost everything he could see. His picture books, the Hokusai Manga, filled with people, animals, flowers and waves, came out in many volumes.

Hokusai used more than thirty names over his life and is said to have moved house very often. At the end of One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji, published when he was about seventy-five, he wrote of his hope that his art would keep improving past the age of a hundred.

If you pick up even finished work and push it a little further, you are like Hokusai.

Kindred painter · Opposite painter

Among the eight painters,
who is near and who is far

Kindred painter
Van Gogh
You can't hide how you feel about the things you love
You share the same fire for giving a whole life to what you love. You easily recognise each other's passion.
See the Van Gogh result →
Opposite painter
Vermeer
You like to sit in a quiet room and look at one thing for a long time
The Vermeer type is content to leave only a few works, quite unlike your urge to keep doing more. From that calm you can learn how to rest.
See the Vermeer result →

Spend a day like this painter

Today, like Hokusai

Three small ideas. Trying just one is enough.

Quickly sketch ten things you saw today in a small notebook. They don't have to be good.
Do one usual task in a slightly different way from yesterday.
Choose a distant mountain or tall building, then look at it again from a different spot.

Katsushika Hokusai