I’m gradually starting to get caught back up, after a disastrous few months. I decided that I didn’t want to end 2011 with nothing completed, so I manged to kick out two pieces of art in the last couple of days. The first was the skatedeck art, The All-Mighty Dollar (see it here), and below is the second one.
This one doesn’t quite catch me up to the current Alphabeasts letter (it’s about to be “L”), but hopefully I can start the week with an “L” image. This one is for “J”, and it’s based on the Japanese mythological character of the jikininki.
A jikininki is a creature that is doomed to eat corpses, often called a “hungry ghost”. Check out this page here for a good reference about the creature. I thought it would make a pretty good Alphabeast, so I started inking it.
The challenge with this one, as it often is with pen and ink art, is to give the impression of textures and shadows. Shadows are a given, of course, being black and white. But texture can be trickier. Everything you see in the art is created with only a series of black lines, some crossing and some not. As an artist, I have to develop certain looks to the different areas to get the texture of it across.
The best example in this image is the difference in texture between the headstone on the right of the image and the wood of the coffin. I only have lines to play with, so I have to put those lines down in a manner that suggests that these are two different textures. On top of that, other lines have to give the impression of shadows, which can easily throw off the textured look.
As with the other Alphabeasts, this is ink on 140 lb. Cold Press, 5″ x 7″. Let me know what you think, here is J is for Jikininki. As usual, click on the image for a larger version:
