Chihiro’s Watercolor Technique

Chihiro produced soft and clear color tones using watercolor paints. Embracing materials developed in Western countries, Chihiro’s painting technique incorporated bold brush strokes, as well as blur and gradation achieved by adding a lot of water. They created expressions similar to those in Chinese and Japanese traditional ink wash paintings. For paintings of infants and flower petals, Chihiro used Mokkotsu-ho, a technique in which form is created by blurring color, without painting the object’s outline. She also used several other techniques, including Tarashikomi, in which another color is dropped into a painting before it has dried, creating a complex blurring effect, and Kappitsu-ho, which uses quick but faint touches of a brush.