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A 73-year-old Japanese artist took YouTube by storm
- dvh 6y agoHe's putting light color on top of a dark color. How is that possible in watercolor?
- neonnoodle 6y agoThere are opaque watercolors, otherwise called gouache.
- FemmeAndroid 6y agoHe’s using gouache. You can get a set of gouache paints, but if you want to experiment, just get a white and mix it with your watercolors to build opaque colors.
- WhoCaresLies 6y ago> took YouTube by storm > japanese Bob Ross sounds a bit exaggerated considering he only got 600k subs on youtube CNN.. what's in their agenda? they want to fabricate celebrities?
- dspillett 6y ago> they want to fabricate celebrities? If you are the first to identify it (or make it up where it doesn't exist) you automatically have an exclusive.
- zaphar 6y ago600K subs is pretty impressive. Enough to start edging him into the minor celebrity status. Most people struggle to make it into the 100s for subs. Fewer even than that make it into the 1000s. Reaching 100000s is a serious milestone.
- mlindner 6y agoKeep in mind Japan's population is a lot smaller than the world's English speaking population. 600k is quite large for a Japanese youtube channel.
- LudwigNagasena 6y agoRussia has a comparable population to Japan. And there are lots of YouTubers with literally millions of subscribers, and I don’t hear about most of them even in Russian media.
- ripply 6y agoIt really is a lot for Japan, if you ever visit ニコニコ動画 (https://nicovideo.jp https://nicovideo.jp) and look at the top videos, views pale in comparison to anything on Youtube. Nico video is #28 on Alexa in Japan (Youtube is #2) and is very very popular, it is a Japanese only Youtube site. It is so popular the Nintendo switch app to view the site came out a year before a Youtube app did (7/2017 vs 7/2018).
- LudwigNagasena 6y agoHa, that's weird. So turns out Russia is probably an outlier in its obsession with YouTube.
- kansface 6y agoThere are many Russian speakers even if Russia doesn't have a huge population - 258 vs 145 million.
- NikolaeVarius 6y agoI consider anyone above 500k a celebrity
- indymike 6y agoAn old guy who teaches people how to paint in a fun way is interesting? The only agenda is getting people to watch CNN for CNN. This story will get eyeballs for a little while. Sometimes the news is just the news. Even when people think the news is some kind of conspiracy, it usually is just the news trying to get attention and sell some ads.
- Throwaway1771 6y agoIt's a conspiracy TO sell ads. Conspiracy just means there's some subset of people that aren't "let in" on what's happening, so they don't fully understand the mechanism of what's going on.
- indymike 6y agoIt's an industry, not a conspiracy.
- bovermyer 6y agoAlmost every single one of your comments has had a negative slant, whether it's condescending, conspiracy-theorist, or just downright rude. If you consider 600k subscribers to be paltry, perhaps you should focus your efforts on YouTube and leave the Hacker News community.
- dang 6y agoPlease don't rough up other users like that, even when their comments are bad or annoying (or you feel they are). It damages the community more than it helps. Not that you shouldn't have commented! but please do it with honey not vinegar. Sometimes users don't understand what the intended spirit of the site is yet. Pointing to https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html is always good of course.
- bovermyer 6y agoI appreciate your sentiment and thank you for the reminder. It was very difficult for me to avoid getting personal and using ad hominem attacks in this particular case; I tried to temper my gut reaction by using language like "maybe this isn't the community for you" instead of harsher terms. In reflection, though, it's not my place to judge others like that, or try and police the community. I apologize.
- NoOneNew 6y agoDude, 600k people is a small city. He reaches a small city worth of people. That's not insignificant by any stretch of the imagination. While yes, cnn is just grasping at smoke to stay relevant as less people care about "news", the guy is legit as a celebrity. Plus, he's actually good at his craft and even got an artistically challenged idiot like me into watercolor painting.
- hnlmorg 6y ago> Dude, 600k people is a small city. He reaches a small city worth of people. That's not insignificant by any stretch of the imagination. Also bare in mind that not everyone who follows YouTube contributors subscribe to their channel. So the actual number of people following his videos will be much higher (eg the tree video in that CNN article has over 5m visits)
- kwhitefoot 6y agoWhere I live, Norway, 600 k is bigger than the capital city! Even 60k is not a small city. Only ten towns in the whole country have more than 60 k inhabitants. For most of us having any kind of direct impact on even a few thousand people in a lifetime is quite an achievement.
- alexmingoia 6y agoWhen I read the title I thought this might be about David Bull, a well-known traditional Japanese woodblock artist who has a great YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/seseragistudio https://www.youtube.com/user/seseragistudio
- waihtis 6y agoDavid Bull is magical. There are certainly some good lessons to learn in how magnetic his videos and storytelling skills are, considering few would list hour-long woodblock printmaking videos a thing they would recurringly watch on Youtube. But here we are.
- doersino 6y agoHe also does thrice-weekly Twitch streams: http://twitch.tv/japaneseprintmaking/videos http://twitch.tv/japaneseprintmaking/videos
- codetrotter 6y ago~120k subs and he’s an American. I mean I guess if you skimmed the title briefly I could see how. But to me that guy seems not comparatively popular on YouTube (and title was talking about taking the world by storm), and working with a Japanese medium and living in Japan still isn’t the association I have when title says Japanese Bob Ross.
- adamsea 6y agoAgreed. “The Japanese Bob Ross” clearly implies that the person is Japanese.
- dqv 6y agoAnd I thought they were talking about Kiwami Japan who makes knives out of various materials: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg3qsVzHeUt5_cPpcRtoaJQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg3qsVzHeUt5_cPpcRtoaJQ I know it's not classical art, but I think it's still rather artistic to re-imagine a knife with new materials.
- bane 6y ago
- Rarebox 6y agoYoutube channel link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPiQ_mEXdEbB-3Yhiq7gq5w https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPiQ_mEXdEbB-3Yhiq7gq5w
- mhb 6y agoFor woodwork, Grandpa Amu has a bit of the same appeal (with a little of the flavor of Primitive Technology): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYkgEf3eWqA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYkgEf3eWqA
- Quequau 6y agoI have been subscribed to this dude for a while now and find his videos to be quite charming.
- pthreads 6y agoShibasaki is awesome. Always a joy to watch his videos. Along similar lines I would like to recommend Ishitani Furniture's Youtube channel. The videos are not tutorials like Shibasaki's but it is a joy to watch Natsuki Ishitani make made-to-order furniture. Equally good videography and editing by Chie. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7FkqjV8SU5I8FCHXQSQe9Q https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7FkqjV8SU5I8FCHXQSQe9Q
- spearo77 6y agoI'll add that for whatever reason you don't want sound on, Ishitani videos are just as good (perhaps better) silent!
- paloaltokid 6y agoI do art on the side and came across Shibasaki's videos maybe a year ago. I agree with others on the thread, he's a wonderful man. One note: if you are inspired to try watercolor after seeing this article/videos, don't be discouraged if you struggle. Watercolor seems easy (that's what kids do, right?) but it's very difficult to master.
- jordache 6y agoDo not compare this guy to Bob Ross. No offense to Bob Ross fans but Ross was not an artist. His paintings were not of high quality amongst the field of what is considered art. This assertion goes beyond subjective tastes. His paintings were amateurish, but much better than people who do not paint. Bob Ross was a wonderful figure who democratized the act of painting to the mass consumer demographic. The level of fame he attained is much higher than the quality of his paintings.
- aquadrop 6y agoI disagree. Even though paintings use simple techniques doesn't mean it's not art. It's liked by the people, doesn't matter what experts consider high quality or not. And you're saying like democratizing act of painting has nothing to do with art, his overall contribution to culture was probably not less than Picasso or any other high known painter.
- jordache 6y agoIf you're going by technicality, yeah anything can be art, including a painting by some run of the mill 3 year old. I'm simply contrasting the level of fame Ross achieved, to his level of art. They are not equivalent at all. His paintings are of rather low quality.
- colejohnson66 6y agoWho’s the definitive authority of “level of art”? There isn’t one because, by definition, art is subjective. Just because you see it as “lower effort” or whatever doesn’t mean it can’t be a high “level of art”. Piet Mondrian drew lines and colored in some of the boxes. Seems pretty amateurish to the “uneducated eye”, but they’re still held in high regard.
- jordache 6y agoThe botched Jesus painting restoration effort. Everyeone is in agreement of the result not being art. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecce_Homo_(Mart%C3%ADnez_and_Gim%C3%A9nez) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecce_Homo_(Mart%C3%ADnez_and_G... I'm not saying Ross' painting is as bad as this extreme example, but to even a casual appreciator of world class art, Ross' paintings are of very amateurish quality. The stuff you'd see hung in a motel breakfast corner for example.
- freeflight 6y agoI wonder why everything has been ascribed to COVID-19 now. Unlike what the article claims, the resurgence of Bob Ross popularity on VoD/streaming has very little to do with the pandemic but has already been a thing for many years due to Twitch streaming Bob Ross's The Joy of Painting [0]. And while most Twitch chats are toxic dumpster fires, a surprisingly wholesome community grew around that Bob Ross channel. [0] https://techcrunch.com/2015/11/09/after-pulling-in-5-6m-viewers-twitch-is-keeping-bob-ross-on-the-air/ https://techcrunch.com/2015/11/09/after-pulling-in-5-6m-view...
- jordache 6y agoNot sure why James Gurney isn't getting more clicks. Another great gouache painter focusing on instructions, tips. https://www.youtube.com/user/gurneyjourney https://www.youtube.com/user/gurneyjourney
- BlueTemplar 6y agoGood. Can he keep it, please?
- PEOPLEgetoff 6y agoI'm very impressed. Not heard him before but I think I will check all his videos. :)