One Percent

"Just hold the image in your head and-!"

There's a story I really like about a goodhearted young man who is often mistaken for a rich and cultured heir, but he and his family are actually very poor. They often eat plain rice for meals, but to cope with it in a fun way, they imagine what food they would like to eat really hard then take a bite.

I like to think I do the same thing with art. Every adventure I've had, every book I've read, every piece of music that has ever moved me. I keep them close to my heart, right beside all the artists I admire.

So when it's time to draw, I recall all those things, hold them tightly, and then-!


If I can even put out 1% of the feeling stored away, it'll be worth it. So I keep drawing.

Wasuremashita

I've been having a bit of a writer's/artist's block lately. My stuff tends to have a narrative or illustrative bend to it; so naturally what I end up doing is bouncing back and forth between imagining a story and trying to draw it out. This works out pretty great.

Except for the times it doesn't.

So when that happens I drag out my big box of old sketchbooks and leaf through the stuff I forgot for inspiration.


Ethan and Virgil again. These guys have been around for a long time. One of these days I'll commit to doing a series of drawings about their adventures to really flesh out the story. I've been itching to do one of Death's parlor since forever ago.


The unnamed couple. I imagined this story probably back in high school. If you know girly comic tropes, this should sound familiar: girl falls into a fantasy world, meets guy, guy helps her get back home, they fall in love at some point, etc. Shenanigans happen. I don't think I ever came up with an ending for this.


...What?

Cartoons are awesome, don't even lie.

Anyway, I think I'm past my block now. Not only did I find a goldmine of ideas to rework, I just came up with a neat side story involving a medical intern and what he finds in a box.

A day in the life of Ethan

The day he died, specifically.

Man, I just realized I've never really drawn Ethan happy. Now I feel bad. I'll have to work on that.

Dialogue

At 5am and with a broken internet connection, I had a moment of stubbornness, mixing boredom with exhaustion. Refusal to sleep, but too unfocused to read. So instead I picked up a pencil. Admittedly, it made for some lovely lines.


I really missed drawing, it was like reuniting with a friend. Natural smiles and comfortable conversation. The pencil was friendly and boldly declared decisions it was confident in, soft spoken in places it wasn't. And even then, it could retrace those unsure places once it had more information.

It felt more like pulling out lines that were already there, they just hadn't been readily visible yet.

But there still has to be some restraint. If all the possible lines in the world were drawn at once, it would be like living in a enormous tangle of knots. All visual noise and no discipline. But if there were no lines at all, the resulting void would be a terrible, silent bore.

In the end, lines and space are best kept in constant contrast.

Although I must admit to enjoying high tension between the two. Only existence and absence have had a longer rivalry.

My Space

My work area on a good day. Given the amount of drawing, painting, and sugar work I've been doing to get away from my job stress, I can assure you it does not look like that now.

General organization:

• Inspiration and unfinished pieces go on the wall where I can see them.
  
• "Finished" work and things I don't want to look at anymore go in the corner on the floor.
  
• Underneath the desk on the right is a box of magazine clippings, fabric swatches, and other knick-knacks I hold onto for future inspiration and reference.
  
• Under and on the left is a pile of old sketchbooks I thumb through for recycling ideas.

Not shown: in the basement, I have a gallery of early work that covers the entire walls, including a wall of just self portraits. Everything there is too rough to do much with now, but too nostalgic to just roll up and put away. So everything just hangs there like a forgotten ode to the beginning.

Just looking at this photo reminds me that I need to glue my dragon head back together and catch up on my embroidery. Art keeps me busy, but at least it's the kind that cathartic.

Ai deshou?

As someone who has spent much of their time changing faces to suit the situation, I forget who I am sometimes. When that happens, I just go back and remember what makes me smile. Because those memories are constant and at the root of my being.

My love, my passion.

So here is one facet of my love: old books.

Old books are a combination that I absolutely adore: history and the printed word. Before internet, before computers, before even movies, this was our way of spreading information and entertainment. This was our advancement.


I bought this book some years ago, with very little information on it. The online seller put the bare minimum up about it, probably due to English not being their first language, but the pictures sold me on it. When I first opened the package, it was love at first sight. The book was so fragile, I was almost afraid to touch it. Every page is thinner and more delicate than newspaper, almost fabric, like a dollar bill that has gone through the wash too many times. The whole book itself sags under its own weight if not supported properly.


I decided to get more information about it. The problem was I only knew a moderate amount of Japanese, and even then the cursive script of this era was unreadable to me. So I decided to use what sources I had: my professors. Luckily for me, I was taking World History at the time with Dr. Lutz. She agreed to look over the book for me with her coworkers. Interestingly, even though I told her what to expect, she still seemed delightfully surprised when I brought it in.

She brought it back a couple of days later, resealed in its original mailing package inside an archival box, along with small packet of information. Dr. Lutz told me that her coworkers were amazed by my book and pointed out certain highlights in the information packet. Apparently it is an issue of Kinmo zui Taisei by Tekisai Nakamura and Shusui Shimokobe from 1789. A sort-of encyclopedia with short descriptions and an accompanying illustration.


These are the only pages scanned because I like to handle this book as little as possible. Just peeling apart the pages is nerve-wracking because every crease has been there longer than I have been alive. It has a few holes from where small bugs have eaten through as well, but those in itself are amusing because you can trace where an insect burrowed through five pages decades ago.

How did I get this book?

Ebay. For only $100.

The internet is a magical place.

Unfinished Portrait

During my last semester in college, I was doing a series of Da Vinci inspired paintings and copies for general practice. This unfinished portrait was a detail of the rightmost angel in "Virgin on the Rocks" (the later version now in the National Gallery in London) seen here:


But while working on it, I realized the painting looked very much like my mother in her early twenties. Just to confirm it, I brought it to my family and they agreed. It's not like I carry around a youthful photo of her, so I'm not sure what triggered in my subconscious to make it this way. It remains unfinished to this day because now I'm just not sure what to do with it.

Do I correct it enough to finish the practice? Or do I run with the idea and paint a sepia-toned portrait of my mother as an angel?

Seems oddly Freudian...