Katsushika Hokusai, a Japanese genius
Hokusai was a gifted artist with extraordinary character. His great works include the Hokusai Manga and Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji. It is said that he moved ninety-three times and changed his artist name more than thirty times.
While working on Hokusai Manga, he heard some people saying he could draw nothing more than small pictures. He then decided to create a large portrait of Daruma in front of many people. It was so big that they could not figure out what he had painted until it was hung from scaffolding the next day.
Hokusai wrote at the end of One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji: “Around the age of six, I enjoyed drawing things. From fifty on, I drew some pictures that people liked.” He also added that he understood the structure of animals and the life of plants at the age of seventy or so
and would understand them better at ninety. “If I have another ten years or just five more years, then I will become a real painter,” he said before passing. The great artist who changed world art was never happy with himself as a painter.