"Silence is a Flower"

Sometimes in art making, your process takes you a little sideways. That is to say, you start out working on one thing you think is going to turn out one way, and it ends up leading you into something entirely different that instead turns out the way you thought that first project was going to. This piece is an example of that - behold, my original artwork designed for Seattle Sakura Con 2013!

Where it all went sideways is that I was actually working on another art project at the time I got an idea for this - mainly because the first project the technique I was using wasn't working out well. But I realized that with a different subject matter the technique would be just perfect . . and the idea for this piece was born.

The only prerequisite I had previously determined for this piece is that I wanted to include an original character of some sort ( which requires you to invent a new individual to portray rather than the pre-existing ones that you can borrow when creating fanart) and I wanted it to include original Japanese "calligraphy" (I put that in quotes because my brushwork is so very amateur). After my experience with the technique I was attempting, I added on to my list that I wanted to draw a woman in a kimono (the subject matter I realized would be perfect with the technique I was attempting). I then decided I wanted to imitate the drawing style of old Japanese woodblock prints (which I LOVE!), and sat down with my pencil and fine-tipped art pen and a book of my favorite prints for inspiration. The rest of the piece then came together as I drew, scanned, and layered.

On this piece, the kanji/hiragana - 言わぬが花 (iwanu ga hana) - literally translates to: "Not speaking is a flower." It's a Japanese proverb about both the beauty of silence and the wisdom of withholding.

The textures on her kimono (including the obi) are thanks to beautiful sheets of origami paper. I had to do a lot of color tweaking and shading to get everything to coordinate and flow together, and it was a lot harder than I first thought! But I think I got this piece to a good place.

I thought about creating another original anime-style character, but I've come to a conclusion. That conclusision is that I enjoy anime and manga, but I've always been more of an observer on that world of story telling. I enjoy being a part of that world by watching, but creating something original is different. Its more involved and engaged. And I don't feel like me and anime are at that stage in our relationship. At this point, I'm just content to keep staring at anime across the schoolyard and sketching little tributes in my notebook to the moments of awesome I glimpse ;-) Or something like that.

So this story of art-making ends happily - except there is that piece I was working in the first place that has been sitting unfinished while this other, new piece got all the attention. Poor little abandoned sketches. Well, they are my next art challenge, to be addressed this weekend . . .more art soon to come!

~md

**UPDATE POST-SAKURA-CON** I edited it again. . .