My Take on Japonisme

I am not a big manga fan but for years I’ve been fascinated by the ukiyo-e (floating world) style and japonisme, so I started to make a series like the example shown in March 16 post. This is the finished drawing. Even though the style was referenced from other images, the drawing itself is original. It was cleaned up colored in Photoshop but the motif of the dress was made in Illustrator and then imported to Photoshop. If the background looks familiar, I traced the pattern from a Piet Mondrian painting using a PS brush and added the textures and my own colors.

Shadow Assassin

I got inspired to do this piece after watching Ninja Assassin. If there's something I've learned from working on this drawing is this: I love Google Sketch Up! It saved me a lot of time with the architecture and perspective (and, technically, it's not cheating since I had to build the whole thing myself - I see it as inking my own 3D model.) I was surprised at how user friendly the program is, too. It can be downloaded for free here.