But when I was putting the piece together visually, I ended up treating it like it was an anime piece. I was focusing too much on keeping it looking like the presentation of an original character rather than letting the visuals tell their own story.
In my original work (that has nothing to do with anime or fan art) I enjoy playing with shapes and lines and usually incorporate them with illustrative elements to tell an abstracted visual story. Much of my original work is digital and I haven't really done much to build the body of it in a few years - not for any particular reason, more I think because I've been invested in improving my other artistic skills than just free forming with what I enjoy. For some reason tonight I thought of this piece and opened it for the first time in a long time. And I just did some free forming. I let the visuals figure themselves out.
And I renamed it and think I can finally leave it alone. Because I think it's finally a piece of original art, which is what I had intended all along.
This piece is now titled "Withheld Memory." The kanji/hiragana written on it - 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.
~m.d.
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