Earlier in spring this year I visited the special exhibition held at the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka, Tokyo titled Painting The Colors Of Our Films. As the name suggests, the exhibition explores the art and coloring techniques perfected by the brilliant artists working at the studio, with input from the late color designer Michiyo Yasuda as well as Ghibli founders Miyazaki Hayao and Takahata Isao.

Photography within the exhibition areas are not permitted, so here are pictures taken from the exhibition booklet that I purchased at the museum store.

(above & below) Back in the day when anime was still created on cels and every frame had to be painstakingly painted manually, detailed and elaborate color keys had to be prepared that denoted the different combination of colors used to represent different times of the day.

(above) Ghibli artists studied the worked of old masters like John William Waterhouse ( The Lady Of Shalott ) and Bilibin to learn their expert use of colors.

The featured exhibition booklet can only be purchased at the museum, but select copies can be found on Amazon Japan.

This exhibition has been running for almost a year now since November 2018, and will be ending its run on the 3rd of November 2019. If you are planning a trip to Tokyo soon, definitely visit ! More details here.

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