Day 30

Bus stop

バスストップ

This is the final day, my last post. Thanks to everyone for all of the support. Doing 30 paintings in 30 days was incredibly hard. I hope you all had a wonderful 2011. Onto 2012! ((I know I have a lot of ideas in the works))

Day 29

Convenience Store (Family Mart)

ファミリーマートのコンビニ

Day 28

Daiei (Supermarket)

ダイエースーパーマーケット

Day 27

Arcade (Amusement World Frontier)

アーケード

Day 26

Futaba Hair Salon

ヘアサロンフタバ

Day 25

Local Vending Machines

自販機

Day 24

Liquor Store Crates

酒屋のクレート

Day 23

JHS Entrance

中学校玄関

Day 22

Izumino Apartments

いずみ野のアパート

Day 21

Kibogaoka

希望ヶ丘

Day 20

Kurofuneya's dog

黒船屋の犬

Day 19

Ikebana II

生け花 II

Day 18

Izumino Station

いずみ野駅

Day 17

Closed Down Shops

閉鎖店舗

Day 16

My Neighbor's Mailbox

私の隣人のメールボックス

Day 15

Isezakichō Shopping Street

伊勢佐木町商店街

Day 14

Bonsai Buddy

盆栽ともだち

Day 13

Ikebana

生け花

Day 12

Frog Jizo and Tanuki (in front of a restaurant near one of my schools)

カエル地蔵と狸

Day 11

Store near one of my schools

一休チエ

Day 10

Japanese Anemone (from my neighbor's garden)

秋明菊

Day 9

Seya Ward Apartments

瀬谷区のアパート

Day 8

Grave

墓

Day 7

Washer/ Dryer

洗濯機/乾燥機

Day 6

Local Shrine (White Princess Shrine)

白姫神社

Day 5

Liquor Store

酒屋

Day 4

Ash Tray

シーサー

Day 3

Lunch

昼食

Day 2

2-4 Chorus Festival Award

2-4 合唱大会賞

Day 1

My neighbors

私の隣人

Mega64: Mega Gods (video)

Royce Kokami once again edited and posted a video short of the Mega64 podcast of my art. Thanks again for doing that! Anytime I need a self- esteem boost, all I have to do is watch this video.

Daily Posts Intro

This week I had a realization. I’ve been in Japan since March and I only have a couple of quick sketches to show for it. I looked at my number of blog posts for this year and found it was only a fraction of last year’s total count. Sure I have excuses like having little time to draw after work, feeling burnt out after teaching children all day, adjusting to living in another country, etc., but really the only excuse was my own lack of motivation.

With that being said, I just finished working on the hardest and most time consuming painting I’ve done (the Mega Gods painting). Feeling motivated from the praises and recognition from the Mega64 crew and wanting to paint and commemorate my time in Japan, I’m attempting to do daily art from Nov. 12 th -Dec. 12 th . These will be posted daily starting Dec. 1 st .

As of right now, the idea is to portray objects I encounter and places I see or visit frequently that I feel are unique and specific to my life in Japan. I will be starting this tomorrow and I think these will all be in watercolor/ pen and ink due to time, portability and supplies I have available.

I hope this will adequately capture a month of my time here.

Mega64: Mega Gods

After a month of painting on weekends and in what little free time I had (October was busy!) I managed to finish a painting request for the one and only Mega64. I can honestly say I've never spent as much time on a painting as I did on this one. This was ridiculously complicated. For more information on this painting, I've linked 2 youtube videos from the Mega64 podcast (edited by Royce Kokami).

New Textile Designs!

I'm really excited about these new designs. Let me just first preface this by saying that living in Japan has really inspired me to create new prints. I wanted to create prints that I could the kids I teach wanting on the things they use every day. Things like tote bags, pencil cases, draw string bags for bento (lunch boxes), and of course backpacks. What do kids in Japan like most? Anime! I decided to use classic, highly inspirational anime series that practically every person in Japan knows of to create prints. These are series that I also love and have found to be almost ahead of their time when they were made and aired. I created my own interpretation of characters from: Astro Boy (鉄腕アトム), Rose of Versailles (ベルサイユのばら), Sailor Moon (美少女戦士セーラームーン), Galaxy Express 999 (銀河鉄道999), and Neon Genesis Evangelion (新世紀エヴァンゲリオン).

First, I vectored the characters and objects in Adobe Illustrator. Then, I brought the images into InDesign and laid out the prints. Next I combined the prints onto the objects in Photoshop and arranged the objects next to images of the prints for my website. With that being said, I hope you enjoy these prints as much as I enjoyed making them.

Mega64 Portraits

Finished portraits of the guys over at Mega64. Love their work and wanted to do some fan art.

Portrait Sketches

I'm finally starting to work on the Mega64 portraits again. I decided not to do them traditionally and to just go ahead and do them in Photoshop and Painter like I did my last self- portrait and the Jhonen Vasquez portrait. Below are the finalized sketches. I still haven't flushed out the backgrounds yet, but I have some ideas.

Sketches!

Another sketch from Japan. I think I may start refining some of my sketches in the future into nice watercolor pieces. It may or may not happen. :P

Japan!

As you all know, I'm back in Japan. I'm here to stay until at least around April of 2012. Art has been on the back burner since I've been here as my job is an assistant language teacher. However, in my free time, I have been drawing. I don't own a scanner, but I finally had access to one today. Here are some of the things I've sketching. My brain is normally in a million places in one day so forgive the randomness of the subjects drawn. These were all drawn over the course of the past 3 weeks or so too. It's pretty much whenever I have my sketch book and have time to draw, I'm doing it. I'm hoping I can post here more frequently, but it really depends on how hectic things are. My job keeps me pretty busy and simple things like buying groceries takes me longer since I'm having to translate things from Japanese into English.

Sketches

I've been substitute teaching a lot to pay for my moving expenses to Japan. I'm going to continue to pursue art, but for the time being I need a stable source of income. In January, I kind of got into a funk. I wasn't getting many jobs since people spent all their cash on Christmas and just came back from vacation (no sub jobs, no art jobs). That's all changed recently and the busier I've been with teaching, the busier I've been with art. I'm working on portraits of Mega64 at the moment and will post those at a later date. In the meantime, here are some sketches I've done during my conference periods at school.


Also, if you are interested in more of my personal life and what my life is going to be like in Japan, you can stalk me over at this blog I started: http://kellygoesjapan.blogspot.com/

Raina Portrait

Portrait of Raina from thesis. I wanted to start revisiting my thesis characters and possibly start really writing and pencilling my comic "Atelier". This project may or may not happen in the future. This was done in Photoshop CS4.