Top 7 'Floating-World' Ukiyo-e Drawing Styles to try for capturing fleeting beauty in your sketchbook on weekends. - Goh Ling Yong
The weekend is a welcome pause, a deep breath in a busy week. For many of us, it’s a time to reconnect with ourselves, and there’s no better way to do that than with a sketchbook and a pen. But what to draw? Sometimes, the sheer endlessness of a blank page can be more intimidating than inspiring. We want to capture the world around us—the steam rising from a coffee cup, the way a cat stretches in a sunbeam, the fleeting expression on a friend's face—but we struggle to find a style that feels both meaningful and manageable.
What if I told you that a group of artists from 17th-century Japan mastered this very art? They were the masters of Ukiyo-e, or "pictures of the floating world." This name is poetry itself. The "floating world" was the vibrant, ever-changing urban culture of Edo (modern-day Tokyo)—a world of theatre, teahouses, beautiful courtesans, and scenic landscapes. Ukiyo-e artists sought to capture the impermanent, fleeting moments of this world, not with perfect realism, but with style, emotion, and an incredible eye for design.
Their woodblock prints were the popular culture of their time, but their artistic principles are timeless. They offer us a rich toolkit for our own sketchbooks, teaching us how to see beauty in the everyday and capture it with elegant lines and thoughtful compositions. So, let’s put aside the pressure of perfection this weekend. Instead, let's explore seven distinct Ukiyo-e drawing styles that can help you capture the "floating world" right outside your window.
1. Kachō-ga (花鳥画): The Art of Bird-and-Flower Pictures
This style is a perfect entry point into the Ukiyo-e mindset. Kachō-ga is not just about creating a scientifically accurate drawing of a flower or a bird; it's about capturing a miniature story, a fleeting interaction within the natural world. Think of a tiny sparrow perched on a snow-laden bamboo stalk or a bee hovering over a blooming peony. The goal is to convey a mood, a season, or a feeling through this intimate pairing.
The true magic of kachō-ga lies in its composition and use of negative space. The empty areas of the page are just as important as the drawn elements, giving the subject room to breathe and creating a sense of tranquility and focus. The linework is often delicate and precise, capturing the fragility of a petal or the texture of a feather with minimal, confident strokes.
Your Weekend Sketchbook Challenge:
Find a quiet spot in a park, your garden, or even by a potted plant on your windowsill. Don't just draw the plant; observe it. Wait for a visitor—a butterfly, a beetle, a bird. Try to capture that moment of interaction. Use a fine-tipped pen to create clean lines. Then, consider adding a single wash of watercolor to one element, like the color of the flower or the bird's chest. Focus on the relationship between the two subjects and let the rest of the page remain open.
2. Bijin-ga (美人画): Portraits of Idealized Beauty
Bijin-ga, or "pictures of beautiful women," were among the most popular Ukiyo-e genres. These are not photorealistic portraits. Instead, they capture a specific ideal of elegance, grace, and fashion. The artists, like the great Utamaro Kitagawa, were masters of conveying mood and personality through subtle gestures—the tilt of a head, the delicate curve of a hand holding a fan, the way a kimono drapes around the body.
The focus here is on the silhouette and the overall composition. Faces are often stylized with simple, elegant lines for the eyes, nose, and mouth, drawing more attention to the elaborate hairstyles and intricate patterns of the clothing. The classic "S-curve" pose, where the body forms a gentle serpentine shape, is a hallmark of this style, imbuing the figures with a sense of life and graceful movement.
Your Weekend Sketchbook Challenge:
You don't need a model in a full kimono! Try sketching a friend or even a figure from a fashion magazine, but focus on the Ukiyo-e principles. Simplify the facial features into clean, minimal lines. Pay close attention to the posture—can you find that gentle "S-curve"? Instead of rendering every fold and detail of the clothing, focus on the overall shape and hint at a pattern in one small area, like the cuff or collar. This is a great exercise in suggestion and elegance.
3. Fūkei-ga (風景画): Dramatic Landscapes and Scenic Views
When you think of Ukiyo-e, you probably picture Katsushika Hokusai's The Great Wave off Kanagawa. This is the power of fūkei-ga, or landscape pictures. These artists revolutionized landscape art by combining traditional Japanese aesthetics with hints of Western perspective, creating compositions that are both graphically bold and emotionally resonant.
Key characteristics include strong, dark outlines, flattened planes of color, and clever compositional devices. Ukiyo-e masters often used "framing," placing a tree branch, a gate, or a bridge in the foreground to create a sense of depth and draw the viewer's eye towards the main subject in the distance, like a mountain or a village. They also masterfully depicted weather and atmosphere, capturing the feeling of a misty morning, a sudden downpour, or a snow-covered evening.
Your Weekend Sketchbook Challenge:
Look for a view, whether it's from your window or a local scenic spot. Try to frame it. Is there a lamppost, a tree, or a window frame you can use in the foreground? Sketch the scene with a bold, confident outline. Then, simplify the colors. Instead of trying to match every shade, pick a limited palette of three or four colors and apply them in flat washes. Use a lighter, less saturated wash for things in the distance to create a sense of aerial perspective.
4. Yakusha-e (役者絵): The Expressive Drama of Kabuki Actors
If landscapes are about serenity, yakusha-e is all about high drama. These prints of Kabuki actors were the celebrity posters of Edo Japan. Artists like the enigmatic Sharaku were celebrated for their ability to capture the raw emotion and theatrical intensity of the stage. This style is not about subtlety; it's about exaggeration, dynamic energy, and psychological depth.
Yakusha-e is characterized by contorted, powerful poses known as mie, where an actor would freeze in a moment of heightened emotion. The linework is often angular and energetic, and the facial expressions are pushed to their limits—eyes crossed in anger, mouths twisted in a grimace of sorrow. It's a fantastic style for learning how to convey emotion through line and shape alone.
Your Weekend Sketchbook Challenge:
Put on a favorite movie or watch a play online. Pause at a moment of high emotion—a confrontation, a moment of shock, a triumphant declaration. Try to capture that actor's expression and pose in your sketchbook. Don't worry about getting a perfect likeness. Instead, exaggerate! Use thick, decisive lines with a brush pen or a soft pencil. Focus on the eyes and the hands, as these are key to conveying the character's intense feelings.
5. Musha-e (武者絵): Legendary Warriors and Mythical Tales
For those who love action and fantasy, musha-e offers a world of inspiration. These "warrior pictures" depict famous samurai, legendary heroes, and terrifying mythological beasts from Japanese folklore. Artists like the brilliant Utagawa Kuniyoshi were masters of creating complex, action-packed scenes that teem with energy and narrative detail.
This style is a masterclass in depicting movement and texture. Swirling water, billowing clouds, and wind-whipped fabrics are all rendered with dynamic, flowing lines that guide the eye through the chaos of a battle. There is an incredible attention to detail in the armor, weapons, and monstrous creatures, making these works a feast for the eyes. As an artist, I often turn to Kuniyoshi's work here at Goh Ling Yong's studio when I'm looking for inspiration on how to draw dynamic, storytelling compositions.
Your Weekend Sketchbook Challenge:
You don't need to draw an entire epic battle. Start small. Pick one element from a fantasy story you love—a dragon's scales, the intricate hilt of a sword, a hero's windswept cloak. Try to capture its texture and energy. Use swirling, repetitive lines to create a sense of motion. This is a great opportunity to practice your cross-hatching and detail work, all while channeling the dynamic spirit of musha-e.
6. Sumō-e (相撲絵): The Power and Ritual of Sumo
At first glance, sumō-e might seem like a niche sub-genre, but it's an incredible study for any artist interested in figure drawing. These prints of sumo wrestlers forced artists to solve a unique problem: how to depict immense weight, muscle, and power in a way that felt both dynamic and graceful.
The style is defined by thick, curving, and confident outlines that describe the massive forms of the wrestlers. It's less about anatomical precision and more about conveying the feeling of bulk and kinetic energy. The artists captured the tension in the moments before a bout, the explosive force of the clash, and the ritualistic dignity of the sport, all with surprisingly economical lines.
Your Weekend Sketchbook Challenge:
Try some quick gesture drawings focusing on weight and form. Look at photos or videos of athletes—sumo wrestlers, weightlifters, dancers—and try to capture their form in 30-second or 1-minute sketches. Use a soft pencil or a brush pen. Focus on simple, powerful, curving lines to describe the contours of the body. Don't worry about details; concentrate on conveying the sense of mass and powerful potential energy.
7. Shunga (春画) Inspired Linework: The Art of the Flowing Line
Now, we approach this final style from a purely artistic and technical perspective. Shunga, or "spring pictures," were erotic prints, but their artistic influence is undeniable. Setting aside the subject matter, the key takeaway for a sketchbook artist is the absolutely masterful quality of the linework. The lines in the best shunga are fluid, confident, and often appear to be unbroken, defining the folds of a robe or the curve of a body in a single, elegant stroke.
This practice of using a continuous, flowing line is an incredible exercise in confidence and observation. It teaches you to simplify forms and trust your hand-eye coordination. It’s about capturing the essence of a shape and the intimate connection between forms, whether they be figures, fabrics, or elements of nature, through the sheer quality of the line itself.
Your Weekend Sketchbook Challenge:
Try a "continuous line drawing." Pick a subject—your own hand, a crumpled piece of fabric, a pair of shoes. Place your pen on the paper and try to draw the entire subject without lifting the pen. Your lines will overlap, and the proportions might be a little strange, but that's not the point. The goal is to train your hand to move with fluid confidence and to see your subject as a series of interconnected contours. This is an exercise we frequently recommend, as it builds immense line confidence for any style.
Your Floating World Awaits
The beauty of Ukiyo-e is that it was never about creating a perfect, permanent record of the world. It was about capturing the vibrant, messy, beautiful, and fleeting moments of life as it happened. It’s a philosophy that is perfectly suited for the weekend sketch artist.
Don't be intimidated by the masterworks of Hokusai or Utamaro. Instead, see their art as a set of tools and a way of seeing. Pick one of these styles this weekend and apply it to your own world. Capture the kachō-ga of a pigeon on a statue, the bijin-ga of a friend laughing in a cafe, or the fūkei-ga of the cityscape at sunset. Your sketchbook is your own "floating world." Fill it with the fleeting beauty you see.
Which of these styles are you most excited to try this weekend? Let us know in the comments below, or better yet, share your sketchbook experiments on Instagram and tag us—we’d love to see your creations
About the Author
Goh Ling Yong is a content creator and digital strategist sharing insights across various topics. Connect and follow for more content:
Stay updated with the latest posts and insights by following on your favorite platform!