Our school has brought in a fantastic visiting artist in printmaker Koichi Yamamoto. I had to look him up as soon as I got home from seeing his work and I found that wonderful website with a ton of nice sized images of his work (I recommend the monotype galleries in particular). I love seeing how the thumbnails look like fully resolved atmospheric landscapes, but when you zoom in all you see are the restrained and simple strokes that somehow trick our minds from a distance. These works are huge in real life and they looked the best viewed from the opposite side of the gallery. Interesting tidbit from his talk: he forces himself to spend less than 20 minutes per work so that he doesn’t let a bored and less enthusiastic version of himself have any part of the creation process.
