"Withheld Memory"

I've worked on this particular piece of art over and over and over again. I initially drew, painted, and colored it for my first year at Sakura Con (you can revisit how it originally looked here - note that I have two edits of the same piece in that post) as a piece of original artwork to bring along mixed in with my collection of fan art. I was inspired by sakura blossoms (cherry blossoms), which the Con is named after, and wanted to create some original artwork that would reflect me as an artist as well as show the Japanese influence of my work. I wanted something that felt a little more serious than I was able to achieve with anime, so I ended up doing a piece that wasn't anime. That felt very brave.

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.

This is finally art. I think you can only understand the achievement that something like this is when you're an artist struggling to find your voice, reworking a piece repeatedly without success. When that success finally and unexpectedly comes, it's a landmark all its own.

~m.d.

Sakura Con 2014

Well, my sister convinced me earlier that we should sell again this year at Sakura Con. I thought she was crazy - one year of intense preparation and stress was certainly enough!

But, I'm crazy too and I agreed to give it another run ;-)

Being aware of what I needed to have to be prepared, I knew I could offer a more solid performance this year. And when I think I can improve, you better believe I'm going to give something another attempt! So, after months of hard work and planning we found ourselves again in Seattle on April 18th & 19th to sell some artwork (BUM-BUMMM!!!).

(the escalator at the entrance to the convention)

(note:  because this was my second year at Sakura Con, I'm not writing about the experience in as much detail as I did for my first year - for a more detailed review of the Artist Alley experience, click here )

My sister had to set up our table initially without me - she hadn't checked the hours we'd have access to the Artist Alley the night before the convention and my work schedule conflicted. She went with my new sister-in-law Laura and they set up, but unfortunately she didn't remember how I put things together last year (sigh). So we got in very early on Friday so I could unbuild/rebuild some elements of our display.

 Alicia had decided that this year she didn't want to emphasize selling much jewelry, so the focus of our entire booth was the prints and bookmarks (with just a few extra things on the side). I also bought a pair of fake cherry blossom branches to put on the top of our booth. For some reason when I think of artist alley booths I think of fake cherry blossoms. . . so I wanted to have some!

(Alicia sitting at our table after we'd properly set up)

Luckily, we timed our arrival well and had plenty of time for set up. Although if I do this next year, I need to remember to get painter's tape. . .

This year I had 6 additional prints (!)  and created a whole new range of bookmarks to match.

(my view of the table from my seat behind it)

 My sister Alicia also offered two prints of her artwork and a couple of bookmarks as well.

You can see all the prints I brought to sell here

This year, our big performers yet again were:

 I was surprised that this time Inuyasha actually outsold Sesshy! (by 1, but still!). I actually sold out of Sesshy 8x10s. 

The rest of the lineup was pretty tight - there were a few surprise dark horses in there, but all of the prints did very well overall. 

(it's difficult to take a discreet shot of people looking at my art, but I managed this one of a cosplayer dressed as a TARDIS)

We actually took in more money this year than last year, which floored me - our first day was quite slow and I was honestly worried. Luckily our second day we more than doubled the sales of the first day - it was a busy day! Being busy made the day go by very quickly, which when you're sitting behind a table for 8 hours you appreciate :-)

Not to mention how much I appreciate the people who took the time to look at and comment on my art. Being at a table, talking to people about your artwork - it's a wonderful, meaningful experience. Each interaction is a treasure. And I still find myself feeling surprised and flattered when people buy my work. One girl purchased over $40 in prints and I found myself starting to blush!

It was interesting because my experience with the group overall was a bit different from last year. I got more comments on my overall technique than I did on any particular pieces. People didn't seem to connect as strong with individual pieces, there were usually several that they commented on and debated between when purchasing. Maybe because I had more strong pieces to sell this year? I'm not sure why the difference. Also, not as many people recognized my piece from From Far Away - although I did end up with one fan who was over the moon about an Izark necklace my sister made from a drawing I created ;-)

(a photo I snapped as I was walking around Artist Alley - lots of people!)

Like last year, there are things we took away that we would do differently - but nothing major. All in all, we had a really good time.

Alicia asked if I will plan to sell again next year. . .my answer is a resounding "we'll see" ;-)
~m.d.

Sakura-Con 2014 - PREPARE!

Lately, I've had TWO HUGE projects on my plate. And as of tonight, I'm done with ONE of those projects (at least, done until the second project is over). And that one huge-but-now-completed project?

PREPARING FOR SAKURA CON.

I've dedicated this last week to wrapping up all the art, designing, and ordering necessary to be prepared for the Con coming up in April (the weekend after the wedding reception for my brother, which is the OTHER huge project I'm working on - I know, right?!). I'm exhausted and excited.

Oh! So here's my latest piece JUST COMPLETED yesterday - inspired by the movie Spirited Away:

It was a massive struggle and didn't turn out how I had planned, but I'm really happy with how it did turn out (and the fact it turned out at all, to be honest!). It was the last piece of art I planned to have complete for Sakura Con and I feel like it's a strong addition to my collection.

I also updated several of my pieces to prep them for printing - including changing this piece up a bit so that the message I wanted to capture is literally part of the art now:

The shape of the crop and the yellow/purples of the text/boxes was, funnily enough, inspired by the fact this Con is always over Easter weekend (the colors I picked feel Easter-y to me and the oval crop shape was me thinking about an egg). I like the spring feel and the overall lightness visually that the crop and text ended up giving it.

I also designed/ordered new bookmarks to bring - they were a big hit last year!

My little prints of Ludo from the movie Labyrinth sold really well last year (surprisingly!), so I took a chance on creating a Labyrinth-themed bookmark with him on it (third from the bottom for those who don't have a clue what I'm talking about). Even if NONE of them sell I love how it turned out and will personally use my stock of them to mark my own books ;-)

It's a weight off my shoulders to have all this stuff taken care of and at the printers. Fingers crossed everything prints well.

Now my plans are to sorta relax tomorrow, allow myself to do a couple of fun things, and switch gears so I can really get into reception planning. I'll probably do some shopping for the reception decoration supplies I need, but other than that I'm going to force myself to take some time off or I know I'm going to burn myself out.

Phew. I'm going to bed.

~m.d.

Spirited Away © Disney

Inuyasha & Kagome

One piece of art I really wanted to have for Sakura Con this year was a new piece of Inuyasha/Kagome fan art. Over my early years as a fan artist I did several Kagome and Inuyasha pieces but I never felt like I did their characters or relationship real justice in my work.

Some examples of what I'm talking about:

I put a lot of thought into what I wanted to do with these characters now.

I decided to create a piece based on very popular images of Inuyasha - but re-imagined my own way. Basically two images/visuals inspired this new piece:

One, there's a popular official image of Inuyasha (I should probably mention here that he's the dog-eared one, in case you have no idea who in the drawing I'm talking about) that shows him with his hand extended. It's great because it looks like he's welcoming you in and the whole series is about joining him on his adventures in Japan's past. But it's also a very out of character image of him - his nature was more to fight or to ignore, not to welcome.

Two, I've always like how it looks when Inuyasha and Kagome are posed standing back-to-back.

I combined these two images/ideas and put my own unique spin on them for this piece. The driving idea behind my drawing was that I wanted to incorporate the popular visual of the extended hand, but as Kagome's hand instead - she was always the welcoming one and reaching her hand out with a smile is completely in character. For some reason, I also really wanted to draw Inuyasha eating his favorite food, instant ramen. In this drawing it worked, since I wanted to convey the "oblivious" aspect of his character (and giving him a surprised and a bit clueless expression with ramen hanging out of his mouth definitely conveys that).

I took some in-progress photos as I drew, so I was able to put together a rough slide show of its progression :

The biggest changes are always made in the step after I scan the pencil drawing and correct on the computer all the proportional issues I wasn't able to quite get right on paper. I think in this progression you can really see that.

Here's a static copy of the final piece:

While I definitely used references for parts of this drawing (and, as I said, was inspired by several very popular Inuyasha official images), a surprising amount of this piece was drawn straight out of my head. I'm really happy with how it turned out.

I think I captured the spirit of these two characters in a way that will speak to fellow fans - at least, it speaks to my own fluttering fan girl heart ;-)

~m.d.

Inuyasha, Kagome © Viz Media

(update 11/29 - I played with this piece a LOT over the year since I first drew it, trying to get it to feel just right to me. . . this is the result that I'm sticking with for now and calling "final"):

BBC's Sherlock

In my usual predictable manner, I got sidetracked from my art to-do list and found myself inspired by a decidedly different genre series - BBC's Sherlock. My sister had a coworker who had recommended the show to her, so one Saturday she sat down and started watching the first episode. As I was in the room with time to kill, I watched it with her. 

And, just like that, we were hooked.

I had no idea this series was popular (or just HOW popular, which I continue to discover). We paced ourselves pretty well watching our way through the first season (each season is three episodes, 1 and a half hour each), then the second - but after the cliffhanger of the last episode of the second season our self control pretty much collapsed. We binge watched the third season like the crazy fan girls we had become, and now are left anxiously waiting like the rest of the giant fan base for the unknown season 4 air date(there was a 2 year hiatus between seasons 3 and 4, so you can't blame the fans for being worried).

I honestly tried to avoid doing a Sherlock fan art . . . but when I got the idea for this piece I gave in.

It started out as a pencil drawing. A pencil drawing that taught me a very important lesson - it's a REALLY bad idea to attempt a realistic piece of artwork based on a badly printed reference photo. Lesson learned (hopefully I will be buying a tablet soon which would be wonderful to use as a drawing reference instead of having to worry about print quality, but I digress). So this became a pencil drawing that I did a LOT of digital painting over top of in Photoshop. Luckily my ability to fix photos can also be applied to fixing horrible art mess-ups.

When I finished fixing up the drawing, I also added a texture to Sherlock's hat and tinted the hat brown - to put a little extra emphasis on it (that will make sense in the context of the finished overall piece). Here's the finished portrait:

I spent way too many days/hours perfecting this drawing. Which still isn't perfect, but I'm at least to a point where I'm happy with how it looks.

After finishing the portrait portion I then moved on to the design of the overall piece that I wanted to create. I usually just find stock online to use for textures (such as splatters) but for this piece I decided I wanted to make my own. And I learned a lot about making splatters. Sure, now there's red watercolor paint across my ceiling, but the end result was perfect.

Add some text and some tinting and ta-dah!!

The quote this piece is based on is from a conversation between Sherlock Holmes and John Watson about the strange hat that has unintentionally become his trademark:

Sherlock:  “Is it a cap - why’s it got two fronts?”
John:  “It’s a deerstalker.”
Sherlock:  “How do you stalk a deer with a hat? What are you going to do, throw it? Some sort of death frisbee?”

I laughed out loud at "death frisbee," especially since the actor mimicked throwing the hat as he said it. And now, my love of that strange conversation can visually live forever.

~m.d.

Princess Jellyfish

Last week I found/binge watched an anime called "Princess Jellyfish" ("Kuragehime"). It popped up on Netflix and my curiosity was piqued. Although the summary sounded strange, it didn't sound so strange I wouldn't give it a try (I kinda grade "strange" in anime storylines on a curve, hahaha!!).

And I'm glad I gave it a chance. I ended up with another new favorite series!

It's the hilarious story of a shy artist who lives in a house full of homely, unemployed, socially awkward female nerds. Each housemate has their own obsession - one is obsessed with trains, one with old men (?!), one with a TV show, and one with traditional Japanese dolls and clothing. They're all single and anti-men (they joke they're nuns, since they're too shy to interact with members of the opposite sex).

The main artist character has an obsession herself - jellyfish. She used to visit aquariums and discuss the beauty of jellyfish with her mother, who has now passed away.

One evening our artist happens to meet an assertive, beautiful, stylish girl - a girl who embodies being a princess, everything the artist's mother used to talk about her becoming. This beautiful girl meets our artist by helping her out in a situation, and subsequently ends up following her home and staying the night in her room. The next morning, the artist realizes that who she's let stay the night isn't a beautiful girl - it's a boy who dresses as a girl!

Shy, homely girl + outgoing, attractive cross dressing boy + a house full of nerdy girls = absolutely hilarious storytelling with some interesting character development (and an odd love triangle) thrown in.

So, I had to draw a tribute piece (note:  this has been updated from its original version):

The boy (Kuranosuke Koibuchi) is dressed as a girl wearing the "jellyfish" dress (although I've modified the dress that the anime and manga show slightly to match my own vision for a jellyfish dress) and the shy artist character (Tsukimi Kurashita) is the kneeling girl. Later in the series these two characters end up collaborating on creative projects - including dress design inspired by jellyfish.

The drawing itself was done in pencil and then colored in Photoshop with a texture applied for visual interest.

Now that this drawing is done, I should be able to focus on the art on my to-do list for the upcoming Con. . .unless I get distracted by another new show. . .

~ m.d.

Princess Jellyfish, Kuranosuke, Tsukimi © Funimation

Kikyo

This watercolor painting (with pencil showing through) I created mostly while I was down with a pretty gross cold. I had this image in my mind of the character Kikyo from the anime Inuyasha and felt committed to realizing my idea as well as I could.

The lineart took me forever to get just right - I'm grateful my sister Alicia can't help but be honest when she gives feedback, it helped me notice and fix a couple of issues ;-)

I plan to sell this as a print at Sakura Con - but I know it won't be a strong seller and I didn't create it with selling as my motivation.  This piece was more for me, more a challenge as an artist that I enjoyed. 

It reminded me of back in my early days of fan art, when I used to draw this character ALL THE TIME.

(here's one of the "best" Kikyo pencil drawings I did back in 2006)

It's fun seeing how far my art (and my Kikyo!) has come.

~m.d.

Inuyasha, Kikyo © Viz Media

Seattle Sakura Con 2013

Once upon a time, I did this crazy thing. I decided to go along with my sister to sell as an artist in Artist Alley at Sakura Con (an anime convention in Seattle, WA). And, many months of hard work later, on March 28th I found myself driving up to the Washington Convention Center to set up my display.

 

(driving under the convention center, in all its glassy glory)

 

Artists can come in and set up the day before the convention begins, so my sister and I took full advantage. We headed into the chaos of booth construction and found our own little half-a-table in the 500 section of the Artist Alley.

And now, the fun began.

Turns out I'm quite handy with planning and construction - the display was my design and I took on most of the building too (as is logical, since I understood the design the best). My first display design ended up not working (we were attaching wire racks directly to our PVC pipe frame, which then became too wobbly), so we tried Plan B (which luckily I had sketched up as well when I was figuring out possible layouts for our display). Plan B had the racks supporting themselves independently in an L shaped display, and it turned out excellently.

first display (in progress) = fail                                                 second attempt = SUCCESS!

And so, the filling of the display  began. But only to a certain extent - most of the product was coming with us the next day. You can see my nice big prints on display though :-)

Then, dawned March the 29th. . .and I, with only four hours of sleep and a bag full of grapes, ventured in the early hours once again north to Seattle.

(hehehe. . .too perfect!)

(my sister and cousin, both of whom came the first day with me!)

And thus, once again, we descended upon the convention center . . . although now, it was much more crowded with excited Sakura Con attendees. Luckily for us, we had about an hour to prepare before the doors opened on the Artist Alley.

 

(Katherine and Alicia getting everything ready - Alicia, my sister, sold her jewelry at the con which is what they're setting up)

(other artists getting their booths ready)

Aaaannnnddd. . . . ta-dah!!!  Our little four feet of artistic glory.

(no. . .we don't take ourselves very seriously. . . )

And thus, 2 days of an incredible adventure began. Sure, that adventure was spent mostly sitting doing nothing that can be labeled "productive" (I did a lot of people watching, joking, and staring off into space), but there were shining moments that made the slow parts sooo worthwhile. Moments when groups were gathered around my booth, and people (staring up at my large prints overhead) struggled against each other to be the first to get up to my table. Moments when friends from the online website where I post my fan artwork came up and introduced themselves to me in person. Moments when people smiled and told me my artwork was really good, or would use awesome adjectives to describe what I had created, and I could tell from their faces that they really meant every word. The moment when the girl recognized Izark and Noriko from "From Far Away" - and bought my print. And the woman who spent $30 on prints and bookmarks. And the native Japanese man who told me my kanji was "incredible" with true admiration in his voice. 

Another moment - or moments, I should say - was every time someone wanted to pay to own a piece of my artwork. It may seem weird, but as an artist, that's an incredible feeling. When the couple dressed as Marshall Lee and Fionna begged me to sell them my display 11x14 when I was all out, even though there were a couple dings and scrapes on that particular print. . .and insisted on paying full price for it. "It's pretty much a family portrait!"

And, of course, there are the cosplayers. . .

It was two exhausting days, but two days of concentrated awesome in moments of glory. And I will never forget it.

Prints that sold the most? These two were the stars:

Although, this piece also sold very well:

 

As did this one:
 

Those were the most popular prints. But I sold a smattering of everything - every piece I made sold at least one bookmark (can you believe that?!). And I sold a unicorn horn headband and a couple zodiac key chains too!! Financially speaking, I made back everything I spent preparing and even cleared a profit!! So how can I not be thrilled?! :-)

(the streets of Seattle filled with Con goers)

Plus, the weather during the convention was beautiful. So it made for two days of beautiful long drives.

What more could I have asked for?

Some people have asked me if I will do it again. I don't know if I will. Fan art is fun, but when it becomes about profit it changes how you creatively approach ideas. And I don't know if I feel up to creating enough new fan art (and getting involved in enough new fandoms) to keep myself competitive in that field. But it is a lot of fun. We'll see.

What I'm taking from this experience really is being encouraged as an artist overall. I feel brave, like I'm proved myself - and it's a good feeling. A feeling that I will take to some of creative projects I've put on hold as I've prepared for the Con (that I can now resume). To ideas for artwork I want to pursue. 

I always feel like calling myself an "artist" is a ongoing battle - that I must prove myself worthy of the title. The label of "artist" is not something I feel I can just take and wear, like a hat or a pair of shoes. It is not something that becomes a part of me I can put on and forget.  I would say it's more like a crown whose weight constantly reminds me of its presence. A symbol greater than myself that if I want claim to, I must fight battles and defend my right to it. Prove myself worthy as its wearer.

Well. . . battle = won. At least for today :-)

And so, it's farewell for this year, my Sakura Con friends . . .

(my sister at our booth right before closing the second day, note that several of the large prints have been replaced with smaller ones because they sold out!)

Thank you for the incredible, incredible adventure!!! ♥

~md

Unicorn horns and zodiac keychains, oh my!

I have been busy. 5 days until Sakura Con!

~md