Interview about New Year Illustration, winner of the A' Digital Art Award 2024
In a tranquil courtyard, amidst the gentle flurry of winter's snow and the vibrant hues of autumn leaves, sits a graceful figure adorned in an exquisite Kimono. The scene evokes the essence of Wabisabi, embodying the beauty of solitude and serenity. Delicate patterns adorn the fabric, mostly Pines, symbolizing solemnity; and the rhythmic Seigaiha representing the tranquility of the sea. Zooming in reveals more intricate details, a stone plate bearing the artist's pen-name rests to the left; and upon the Kimono, patterns of mice representing the new year 2020, the year of mice.
View detailed images, specifications, and award details on A' Design Award & Competition website.
View Design DetailsSo creativeness is not like popping out of thin air, but like fermentation, or brewery - you collect lots of ingredients and let it sit, while waiting for the "Eureka" moment where everything suddenly clicks together and your creative inspiration stirs like a hot spring all over the place.
You can say it's like a kind of OCD - obsessive-compulsive-disorder - that it's not like "inspired", but paranoid to attend to details and make it perfect for the eyes. Well, artists usually have to some degree OCD and that's what makes an artist and artist.
So the key is saturation. When you see the background, the red and yellow leaves, they are vivid and splendid, but when it comes to the main figure, the dominent color is black, and the saturation level is low. That's the exact reflection of wabisabi - even though you are sitting in a colorful world surrounding you, your heart remains still, as if you are enjoying your own solitude but feel tranquility in there at the same time.
So use Gaussian blur, that's it. It's a common technique in photography that to blur out background and let the beholder instantly focus on the main object, while creating a feeling of space. It's the same as perspectives but just without lines.
So I played a game called Ikenie To Yuki No Setsuna (I am Setsuna, 2016) on PS4 years before I started this painting, and the main visual of it is a big maple tree covered in snow. I believe that is one of the prototype in my mind that brewed in there.
So firstly the choice is limited if you wish to be authentic enough on the patterns - then I just go through my "kimono pattern dictionary" to see which variation looks the best.
It's like I just keep creating arts that I want to, and if some of them got some award it's awesome. If we take an extreme case, van Gogh, he won't care how many prices and award he will get nowadays or how high a record price his work can hit in an audition, but keep creting arts as he wish.
It's now quite blurred how it matured - but again it's like brewery that you collect various ingredients, and suddenly the image jumps into focus that "this is what I am going to draw", and as far as I remember I only got blurred images during like 2017-2018, and suddenly it becomes very clear - so I draw and make it into incarnation.
You know, it's more fun when you have restrictions. Just like creating Sonnets, you have to follow certain rythem rules and that's what makes it fun - another analogy will be poker that why poker is so popular, because you need to follow poker rules while playing cards.
Actually it's like "where's the Mickey Mouse?" in every Disney movie - it's a playful mind that you want to put some easter eggs for the beholders to not just behold the work, but "interact" and "play" with it. And what serves better then the zodiac symbol?
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