Kuniyoshi was also known for his still-life paintings of common objects, and figurative subjects like female circus performers and nudes. Throughout Kuniyoshi's career he had frequent changes in his technique and subject matter. In the 1920s, Kuniyoshi painted images that were more angular, somewhat Cubist in style and with a tilted plane that allowed him to paint the most detail for each object in his paintings. Kuniyoshi's application of Cubism's angularity can be seen in his painting titled "Little Joe with Cow" (1923). In these early paintings, Kuniyoshi was painting from a combination of his memory and imagination, which is a Japanese mode of thinking about painting. Instead of painting from life, as in Western painting, traditional Japanese painters typically paint their ideal image of a particular subject. Kuniyoshi combined this with Western painting in the way he applies the bold colors in oil on canvas; in Japan, traditional painters use ink on either silk or rice paper. These early paintings are the precursors to his mature style that we see in the 1930s.