It’s been nearly a year since Gallery G2 last invited us to play around with the forces of nature in 2009’s 風雷暴 / Fujin Raijin Exhibition. This year, rather than tempting the wrath of the storm gods, we are exploring the crackling countenance of thunder (as well as lightning) and the gusty guise of wind. Now, when I think “countenance”, I think portrait. And when I think “portrait” I think Flem. As in Flanders. And so it was that I looked to the Dutch masters and their wacky chiaroscuro for inspiration.

So, yeah, I drew a portrait of the wind. Stop on by the gallery before the 31st to take a gander. Even in my sleep-starved state I was mightily impressed by the girth of talent on display. Everything from metal sculpture to acrylic painting to hand-made dolls and, ahem, cut-paper are represented. It’s well worth weathering the sudden summer heat here in Tokyo.

I’ll be at the gallery Saturday, July 24th (count on me being late…it’s a safe bet). I’d like to be there at least one more day, but I haven’t decided which. Drop me a comment or email with your availability, and I’ll try to be there!

Here are the details:

Name: 風雷貌 / A Wind-Swept and Thunderous Countenance

dates: July. 22nd (Thurs) to July 31st (Sat) 2010 gallery closed Wed. 7/28

Times: 12pm to 7pm (Last Day: Closes at 4pm)

place: Gallery G2; located in Ginza, just around the corner from Melsa (メルサ）.
Tel: 03-3567-1555
gallery website: right here.
MAP

artists / 出品者：大澤冬樺（墨）／田村晴海（創作人形）／中村滋（アクリル）／パトリック・ギャノン（切絵）／松井直友（金属）／守屋礼子（アクリル）

日付: ２０１０年７月２２日（木）〜７月6３１日（土）
時間: １２時〜１９時 / 最終日は１6時まで
住所: Gallery G2 東京都中央区銀座２丁目８−２　日紫１F
電話: 03-3567-1555

Take, for example, my most upcoming of exhibitions: 風雷貌 (ふうらいぼう) Fuuraibou at Gallery G2 in Ginza, Tokyo. It’ll run from July 22 thru the 31st. There will be more to say about the show soon, after I figure out a good English translation for the title. Until then, mark your calendars.

In the previous blog entry, I mentioned that I was working on the biggest, wackiest piece I’ve done yet. Well, it’s 99.99% done. Just one last piece to glue down. The catch is, it’s so darn big that it won’t fit on my scanner. Yeah, usually I have to scan my artwork in two or three (or four) parts, then mosaic them together in Photoshop. And it’s a royal pain in the neck. This one is so big, it’s gonna take at least 6 or 8 scans, I think. And I’m just dreading it. Getting all the lines to line up, forcing the colors to match, zipping around and erasing all the miniscule dust particles… the thought alone makes me shudder. It won’t be as detailed, but I’m trying to eke out a good photo, and will post it as soon as I can.

In the meantime, I thought I would share a little bit of the inspiration that drove this whale of a piece. Cherry blossoms! In April, just walking to the shop for milk turns romantic as the sakura petals fall all around you. This year, they even hung on the trees for a couple days before being obliterated by torrential rains. The dark and twisted trunks of the older trees are a fascinating contrast to the delicacy of the blossoms. You can see a few more on Facebook.

Oh yeah, and here’s a Work In Progress. All the bits and pieces before being conjured and cobbled and puzzled together. Can you figure out what this will become?

It’s been a while since I’ve taken a vacation. In fact, today was the first time I’ve escaped from Tokyo in months (to Kamakura, for a bit of temple hopping and mountain climbing and local beer and sausages. ‘Twas awesome).

They say that “getting there is half the fun”, and generally I agree. It was certainly the case today, with the train ride jammed full of good conversation and weird observations. Not to mention the long, satisfying nap which was the return trip. Sometimes though, all I want to do is find a way to distract myself until I reach my destination. Wrapped securely in a cocoon of books, movies, music and sleep. All the while doggedly ignoring everything springing up all around.

I’ve been trying to work on a slightly larger scale recently. It gives me a chance to tell more complicated stories with more subtle emotions and concepts. Not to mention that some of the papers I’ve picked up recently are just too beautiful to slice apart. Take, for example, the background paper in this piece. The deep blend of colors mixed with the gold ink is just stunning in person. It’s really a piece of art unto itself.

Or the subtle variations in color in the beastly blue.

Finally, here’s the scribble I worked off of. The concept popped into my head more or less fully formed, but with an entirely different cast of inappropriate characters. By this time, I had revised them to their near-finished state. The big hands on the mount’s front limbs were a late addition. It’s surprising how much intelligence those opposable thumbs add to a creature; they make all the difference between a beast of burden and a sentient creature.

I plan and scheme and schedule for a couple of months before each Tokyo exhibition, working out the time needed for every piece of art and pre-show preparation, making sure to give myself plenty of time for accidents both happy and grumpy. Then, somehow I’m pulling an all-nighter right before the show, putting the finishing touches on one more piece I Just Had To Do. The morning of the show, basking in the victory of completion, I pack up every item and head out. Every item but one.

That item is inevitably a camera. Hasami No Oto (The Sound of Scissors) at Niji Gallery last month followed this pattern pretty closely. However, in days past, I would somehow manage to forget the camera (or to charge the battery) each and every time I dropped by the gallery. This time I remembered it on the last day. Probably because my vigilant wife accompanied me.

Sadly, that didn’t mean that I was conscientious enough to actually use it. The poor little thing sat in my bag all day, mewing like a forgotten kitten, waiting to achieve it’s snapshot-snapping purpose. And I ignored it. Luckily, my friend Mayuko Fujino, another artist at the show, had just accidentally bought a humongous digital SLR and was experimenting with it all day. You can see the fruits of her labors right here.

So, a big thank you goes out to Mayuko for sharing the photos with me and letting me share them with all of you. I hope those of you who couldn’t make it to the show feel as inspired by the wide variety of cut paper artwork as I was. Enjoy!

Given “Travel” (the theme of the recently wrapped-up Sound of Scissors), most folks would picture the glittering lights of Paris, the sun-baked desert pyramids of Giza, or the stone noggin chorus line of Easter Island. Then they would draw that picture. I, however, am not most people. By which I mean that I never get to go to any of those cool places. Instead, my mind wandered to the kind of travel that I do get to enjoy.

Evidently, the kind of travel that I enjoy begins with me dipping my head into any convenient hole or hollow whereupon it is rent from my body molecule-by-molecule, cast through time and space, and finally bonded to the underside of a nebulous, floaty, precipitation-prone bundle of gasses.

On the other hand, I coulda been thinking along more metaphorical lines when I was sketching out this moody forest scene. Something about how different experiences force us to re-evaluate the things we’ve always taken to be universal. Perhaps travel inside ourselves. Maybe even a short trip through the metaphysical astral plains. Y’know, that sorta high-minded nonsense.

As for technique, I’ve been playing around a little bit more with combining built up layers with “traditional” Japanese kirie (dark linework as the top layer with any color added underneath) best seen in these funky foreground grasses. Basically, starting in the middle and adding out the color layers in two directions. It’s fun, and allows for some great texturing. It also adds a little to the amount of time it takes to finish, especially when it comes to gluing down that dark layer.

I’m continuing to experiment with mixing these two techniques in some of my other work as well. It’s a nice way to distract my mind from not having any time to fly to Paris or Egypt or…hey…is that a hole?

As soon as I get the chance to do a little scanning and color-correcting, I’ll start posting the new artwork. Until then, please enjoy these small glimpses behind the curtain of mysterious secrecy. Cast your eyes below to peruse the original thumbnail sketch for “A Short Trip, A New Perspective”. Now, glance upwards to see how the image changed on it’s winding path to completion. What you’re looking at right now is the back of the paper which will form the main foundation of the piece. With all the linework on it, still in need of chopping. It took me a bit to figure everything out, but in the end, it came out pretty much the way it was envisioned. I can’t wait to show you.

Oh yeah, if the map on the postcard is a little too… hand-drawn, here’s the google version.

But I’m breaking out of my frozen slumber for a celebration of all things papery and cut with はさみの音 (hasami no oto) – The Sound of Scissors. This will be the first all-切り絵 Cut Paper Show I’ve had the honor to join, and I couldn’t be more thrilled. We’re a diverse bunch with work ranging from children’s book style to more mature themes, from traditional to contemporary. The art is rich in color and shape and line. The theme this year is “Travel”, a subject wide-open in it’s possible interpretations. I’m excited to see the work everyone comes up with, and I urge everyone in the area to stop on by.

Here are the folks involved:

• 坂井高史（切り絵）
• 瀬尾やすこ（切り絵・銀粘土アクセサリー）
• タナベユミコ（切り絵・羊毛フェルト）/ Tanabe Yumiko (cut paper + felt)
• CHIKU（切り絵）/ CHIKU (cut paper)
• 藤野真由子（切り絵）/ Mayuko Fujino (cut paper)
• パトリック・ギャノン　/ Patrick Gannon (cut paper)

the details:

name: はさみの音 – The Sound of Scissors

greeting reception: TBA

dates: Thursday March 18 – Tuesday March 23, 2010 12pm-8pm

place: 〒180‐0004 東京都武蔵野市吉祥寺本町2‐2‐10 / Tokyo, Kichijoji Honmachi 2-2-10

access:（ＪＲ中央線　吉祥寺駅より徒歩４分）

tel: 0422-21-2177

gallery website: right here.
click image to enlarge

Not so long ago, I gave a brief PaperCutting workshop to the local Tokyo chapter of the SCBWI. It was a ton of fun to do, and I really enjoyed being able to show a little bit of what goes into the process of one of my cut paper images. Just as rewarding for me, though, was researching the history of the art form and some of its most talented practitioners.

I had always assumed that cut paper art in Japan had as long a history as the Chinese tradition (which dates back to…well, pretty much the day after they invented paper!). Shockingly, I was wrong. While paper cutouts had been used for centuries as stencils in the textile industry, mostly for creating exquisite kimono designs, it was not recognized as as art unto itself.

That changed with 滝平二郎 (Takidaira Jiro). Born in 1921, he grew up in the Japanese countryside on a farm. After returning from the war, he threw himself into artwork. His early work reminds me of Russian poster art of the time, with it’s strong, serious, proletariat farmers. As time went on, the paintings become sparser and more graphic, borrowing the strong and simple line of manga comics. Eventually, he segued into children’s book illustration, and this is where his work truly bloomed. Sometime in the 1960’s, Takidaira began to incorporate cut paper into his illustrations, laying it over backgrounds painted in watercolor and India ink. It’s fascinating to watch the progression of his work as he became more and more enamored of the paper and the cutting. In the 1970’s, we can see the amount of detail increasing until it fills the whole page with patterns of flora and the textures of Japanese life. Then, in the 80’s he cut the artwork back down to the basics, with wide swathes of black and simple, powerful compositions.

Despite the evolution in his work, one thing remained constant: the charming and nostalgic humanity that was at the center of nearly every image he created.

I, myself have been saying the same thing forever; “my paintings are always about my love of stories and people”. I seem to have committed myself to this “motto” and I realize the more often I am asked to explain it the more mundane my explanation becomes, but I have no idea how to break free from this cycle.
-Takidaira Jiro, “Worrying About My Worries” from Works

I, for one, am grateful that he never overcame his love of traditional Showa-era Japan or its people. With only a splash of color and a layer of paper, he portrayed an astonishing depth of soul and humanity.

Takidaira-様 passed away last year (2009). While I regret that I couldn’t have discovered him and his amazing work while he was still around, I was lucky to catch a retrospective of his work last month here in Tokyo. Seeing a lifetime’s worth of such work gathered together was both humbling and inspiring.

While researching his work, I stumbled over a Japanese website (since lost to the tangled strands of the Web) which claimed that Tadidaira coined the word “切り絵” (kirie, literally “cut picture”). In 1971. The same year I was born. Destiny, perhaps? In any case, I’m proud to be following in his papery tradition.

Lines and Colors is, in their own words, a blog about drawing, sketching, painting, comics, cartoons, webcomics, illustration, digital art, concept art, gallery art, artist tools and techniques, motion graphics, animation, sci-fi and fantasy illustration, paleo art, storyboards, matte painting, 3d graphics and anything else I find visually interesting. If it has lines and/or colors, it’s fair game.

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