If you are a fan of contemporary Japanese art and illustration chances are you would have heard of Yusuke Yamada…or as the rest of the world know him, CHICHI.

This amazing Japanese designer has a style that incorporates a sultry mix of Western and Eastern influences, which mainly centres around female figures and natural elements.

While he first started out as a traditional artist, painting everything by hand, he then spent many years in the States, returning with loads of new skills to power up his craft.
He now blends modern digital design into his work but does not allow himself to rely solely on these new-tech methods. CHICHI spends laborious hours painstakingly creating artwork which is described as “dot to dot and line by line on a miniscule scale”. Now this is a designer who puts in the time and in doing so creates some of the most visually striking illustration to ever come out of Japan.
What you put in is what you get out!

This is perhaps the main thing that I like about his design ethos. He is willing to use new digital design, but he is not willing to fully relinquish his roots. It sounds like his fear is that while computers give the freedom for anybody to express their artistic talents on a new level, there is the danger of imitation and saturation….in essence watering down original artist’s hard work.

CHICHI has since made a name for himself all across the globe. From Japan to the US, he has held immensely successful exhibitions, bringing the flavour of Japan to the world in a new and exciting style.

 These days CHICHI is highly sought after and his amazing works adorn businesses across Japan. I would kill to get my hands on some of Yusuke’s work. I seriously need to order one of his prints.
He has also started up his very own apparel label called Visible Elephant 47, which seems to be doing pretty well and sells on an international scale.

What I would really like to get my hands on is his Line Drawing CHICHI artbook, which is jammed packed full of his best work. While this may seem like a perfect coffee-table book, I think I’d rather lock it away safely in a vault. Too precious to get pawed by people with sticky fingers haha.

CHICHI really gets my creative juices flowing…I just wanna go home now so I can start sketching hehe.

Thanks ;)

What do you guys think of this super talented Japanese designer??