My new job has been going really well, thank goodness, but I have still been pushing myself to work on art. I’ve been in the mood to work on cherry blossoms recently. Luckily, I already produced a number of cherry blossoms earlier in the year that have just been sitting there waiting for me to use them. I made the cherry blossoms for this ear cuff separately, but the leaves were made as part of my earlier cherry blossom production push.
This is my second cherry blossom ear cuff; the first one I originally made for myself, but ended up giving it as a gift to my kimono designer idol – Mamechiyo – at Anime North last year. I might make one for myself again some day, but this one is intended to be part of my potential future exhibition collection, so I won’t be hanging on to it.
This iteration of the cherry blossom ear cuff has one of my new style of butterflies that are made with holographic film and UV resin instead of dip resin.
I feel like the butterfly is a bit large, and if I were to do it again I’d probably do the butterfly a bit smaller. I’ve been experimenting with wings made of two pieces instead of four, and I think I’ll probably end up doing two-piece butterflies for the shoulder cape-veil type experimental piece I’ve been working on over the last week.
One of the things I used to struggle with a lot as a comic book artist was consistency. Your art generally improves over time, so the way you draw a character when you start on a series might be very different from how you draw them at the end of it – but you want to try and be consistent over the course of an issue, or maybe a volume, in order to keep these differences from being jarring or difficult for readers to parse.
Of course, creating fine art/craft is a little different from an ongoing comic. I think consistency is also important over the course of a creating a collection, but I also want each piece in this collection to be unique and the best it can be. So, for me, the consistency is going to be more about having a unified theme with pieces that make sense when viewed together. I’d rather let this collection embrace the thoughtful evolution of how I use materials and techniques than shy away from it.
This week I was also lucky enough to have some of my work featured on the Knot Japan website, along with a short interview about my work as part of a series of feature interviews with international creators. Knot Japan is run by one of the teachers for Tsumami Zaiku Ichirindo – an amazing workshop and store in Tokyo that offers classes on tsumami-zaiku to beginners and veterans alike. From what I understand, Knot Japan is essentially the English website for the school.
If you’re interested in making your own tsumami craft, they are an excellent source for materials and information. They are currently getting their English shop set up with special discounts for foreign creators, so I highly recommend checking out both Knot Japan and Tsumami Zaiku Ichirindo if you’re interested in this beautiful craft.
I’m hoping that I’ll be able to attend their workshop for a master class in early 2021, but we’ll have to see how things are going with the pandemic.
I feel extremely grateful that our area has not been heavily effected, and that I have travel to look forward to in the new year, but I worry every day about friends and family who aren’t so lucky.
I was really exhausted last weekend, between general pandemic anxiety and starting my new job, but this weekend I’ll definitely be live on Twitch. I’ll be making some progress on my couture shoulder cape veil, and working on an abundance of three-flower hair clips.
If that sounds interesting to you I hope you’ll join me tomorrow, on Twitch where I’ll be hanging out with Hissabelle. Come for the chill crafty times and drop a follow to find out when I’m live.
