Art: Manabu Ikeda Paints Chaos

History’s Rise and Fall, 2006, pen, acrylic ink on paper, mounted on board 200×200cm, Photo: MIYAJIMA Kei, Takahashi Collection

Behold the art of Manabu Ikeda, a meticulous Japanese artist. Ikeda used a small acrylic pen to paint this highly detailed, intricate piece. You could easily spend days inspecting every inch. The last time we were so impressed by the preciseness of a piece was when we discovered Odo aka Nicolas Le Borgne. This particular artwork captures chaotic tsunami scenes. This anarchic setting appears somewhat inspired by a fairy tail, making the reality of the scene that much more tragic. These pieces take Ikeda up to a year to be complete, measuring over 10 feet.

Foretoken, 2008, pen, acrylic ink on paper, mounted on board 190×340cm, Photo :KUGE Yasuhide, Sustainable Investor Co.,Ltd.

“I try to daily sketch out some images that pop up in my mind in sketchbooks. It depends on the size of work, but for big size ones, I usually ink it directly without draft. I use ideas that flash in my mind at the moment, along with using my sketchbooks. From a distance, I look at the whole balance of work, and finally determine the image, which takes about one year after I started drawing. Recently, I try to have a whole solid image in the beginning to shorten the time.” [Read more: here]