Transmitting the Spirit, Revealing Form of Things: Picture Album of Drawings at One Stroke (Denshin kaishu ippitsu gafu 伝神開手 一筆画譜)
This is a Japanese woodblock picture manual from 1823, published in Nagoya by Eirakuya Tōshirō, meant as a teaching album for amateur painters learning to draw figures in a few confident strokes. The pages show rows of seated and standing figures, mostly women and people in robes, with handwritten Japanese captions naming each pose or action. A designer could take from them the economy of a single continuous line, with soft pale washes of colour placed loosely beside the black outline, and the way a whole gesture can be carried by very few marks.
