Shibasaki drawing goes viral
- Watercolor artist Shibasaki posted a drawing video using a 12B pencil that went viral on X. - The clip accumulated about 1.3 million views, 28,000 likes, and 3,000 reposts in hours. - The video's popularity spotlights renewed interest in traditional techniques among online art audiences. (x.com)
A drawing video from Japanese watercolor artist Harumichi Shibasaki spread quickly across X after he switched from paint to a 12B graphite pencil. (x.com) Shibasaki’s official site identifies him as “Grandpa Sensei,” a painter with more than 50 years of teaching experience and roughly 213,000 followers on X. His broader online audience is larger: the same site lists 1.737 million YouTube subscribers, 838,000 TikTok followers, and 202,000 Instagram followers. (watercolorbyshibasaki.com) On YouTube, his recent video “The Darkest Pencil? Testing the ‘12B’ for the First Time! My Honest Review” was posted about a day before search results were indexed, and his channel had 2.12 million subscribers there. A Japanese listing for the related short said the 12B clip was published on April 19, 2026. (youtube.com) (yutura.net) A 12B pencil is an unusually soft graphite grade that leaves a darker mark than standard classroom pencils. Staedtler describes 12B through 3B as “very soft pencils for drawing,” and Pencils.com says softer cores deposit more graphite and produce darker lines. (staedtler.com) (pencils.com) Shibasaki has been building that audience for years through slow, technique-focused videos rather than fast-cut edits. His official biography says he was born in 1947, started the “Watercolor by Shibasaki” YouTube channel in 2017, and passed 1 million subscribers in 2022. (prtimes.jp) That online following is now being converted into in-person events. A release for his upcoming Osaka exhibition said he had more than 2.1 million YouTube subscribers and more than 4 million followers across social platforms as of January 2026, with a show scheduled for April 30 through May 5 at Holbein Gallery. (prtimes.jp) The 12B clip fits the pattern that made him popular in the first place: familiar materials, shown close-up, with the emphasis on hand movement, pressure, and surface texture. On his channel page, recent uploads include long watercolor demonstrations, critiques, and material tests built around those same basics. (youtube.com) The result is a social-media hit built from one of the oldest tools in drawing. In Shibasaki’s feed, the novelty was not a new app or filter, but how dark a pencil line could get in the hands of an artist his audience already knew. (x.com)
