#アトリエセントー

Kappa’s Dream - making of a yôkai illustration

This video tutorial explains how we paint an illustration using watercolors. This illustration is part of a yôkai exhibition that will be displayed at Gallery Craole, in Niigata, Japan.

Tools:
- paper: Canson Montval 300gsm
- pen: UniPin 0.3
- brushes: raphael sofAqua 12
- watercolor: Winsor & Newton

Namazu - Yokai exhibition in Japan

This one is a namazu (catfish). Namazu are often represented in Japanese Ukiyo-e (prints) with human behaviour. As you can see on the second picture, the catfish has incredible whiskers. When I found the idea and drew the sketch  (picture 1), I was kind of remembering this picture, that’s why I drew very flexible whiskers.
As you can see on one of the pictures, we used our own fan as reference and origami washi papers to find ideas for the pattern and the colors of the yukata.

Pipe spirits - Yokai exhibition in Japan

In summer 2012, we traveled around Japan to witness many festivals and we saw to the Hachinohe sansha taisai, a very big impressive and colorful festival. We loved the pipe players clothes and gestures. This is what inspired us for this illustration. Cecile gathered pamphlets we brought back from the event, a watercolor sketch made on location by Olivier during the festival and pictures we took as documentation before starting to draw the pencil.

Drawing Japan is like traveling back in our memories. When we drew this illustration, we remembered all the atmosphere of the festival, the people we saw and we could almost ear the pipes sound. It has something magical.

Kappa – Yokai exhibition in Japan

The first yokai Cecile wanted to draw is a Kappa. Since we visited the beautiful town of Tono, Japan, in summer 2012, we felt inspired by the nature and the folklore of this city in most of our projects, especially for our graphic novel Onibi.

Tono is famous for keeping yokai world alive and you can see kappa figures everywhere. Kappa are water creatures living in rivers. It is said that in north of Honshu, when the winter was too hard, people used to give their youngest child to the kappa. It probably means they abandoned the children in the river because they couldn’t feed everyone.

Like most of the yokai, Kappa are both cute and frightening. They can be friends with children playing at rivers but they can also decide to drown them.Anyway, Kappa have a lovely weakness that makes them very touching : a cup full of water above their head that must not disappear or they suddenly loose all strength and become weak.

At first, Cecile draws idea sketches, remembering Tono mysterious atmosphere and the statues of Kappa we saw there, like this kappa figure watercolor sketch in location Olivier drew. When the idea is found, she gathers documentation : books of Japanese yokai paintings, fish and turtle on pamphlets and books with seaweed references. She draws the pencil, then Olivier makes the inking thanks to a light pad and a black pencil (UniPin 0.3). He humidifies the paper (Canson 300g) with water and fixes it on a wood plate before starting to color (Winsor&Newton watercolor).

Fox lady – Yokai exhibition in Japan

In may 2010, when we lived in Niigata, Japan, we had the chance to witness a very mysterious event in the mountains : a fox wedding under the cherry-blossom trees. It remains one of our most beautiful and strange memories from Japan. The inhabitants of the village had fox makeup and were celebrating this strange slow wedding until late in the night. We saw a young lady with a beautiful yukata and a fox mask upon her head plus a fox makeup on the face. She was acting like a real fox, with the hands closed like fox paws.

In Japan, it is said that foxes change into beautiful girl to attract men in traps ! This girls was sooo strangely beautiful that we couldn’t prevent ourselves from thinking she was a real one…

We used this idea many time for our sign sessions of our graphic novel Onibi but this time we made it very close to our memory of a strange and ecstatic spring day in the mountains.

For the clothes, we use washi paper (Japanese paper) that helps us to imagine the colors and the motif.