～画
～が · ～ga · JLPT N2 · noun
painting
🖼️🎨 ga as in gallery: 日本画 nihonga = Japan + painting
As a suffix, ～画 marks a style or genre of painting: 日本画 nihonga is Japanese-style painting, 洋画 yōga is Western-style painting. The kanji once showed a brush marking out the borders of a field.
画 — hand 一 + field 田 + frame 凵
Originally a pictograph of a hand holding a brush drawing boundaries around a field, depicting the act of marking out land. The top once showed a brush (聿), and 田 represents the field being divided. Over time it came to mean 'to draw, paint' and also 'a stroke' in characters.
～かく · ～kaku · JLPT N1 · noun
stroke
✏️ Sounds like 書く (kaku, to write): count one per pen mark you write
画 = 田 (field) + 聿 (brush), an old sense of marking lines. Each stroke is one mark, so 三画 means three strokes.
画 — hand 一 + field 田 + frame 凵
Originally a pictograph of a hand holding a brush drawing boundaries around a field, depicting the act of marking out land. The top once showed a brush (聿), and 田 represents the field being divided. Over time it came to mean 'to draw, paint' and also 'a stroke' in characters.