お花見

A long-belated present for my friend, Liling! As an indicator of how tardy I am about such things, I offered to do her something in February. Now it is May. Ahem.



As requested by Liling, the picture is of a flower-viewing party between a couple wearing kimono. The background was done by scanning in some really expensive chiyogami paper. This picture originally began as a colour draft for a papercrafts project (yes, I was planning on cutting out the black stuff using a penknife and everything), and then I got a bit carried away. So instead of getting a honest-to-goodness 3D artwork made of cardstock and chiyogami she got this instead. *_*

I liked the above version, but then I thought I could do more with the colours and textures, so I pulled out a second layer of scrubbed blue and yellow for a richer statement and thinned out the cherry petals near the top.



Liling said she preferred this second version, even though it feels more like winter than spring. :D Perhaps a late afternoon hanami? The poem on the top left is about loneliness and memory, and has very little to do with the picture unless you create a story for the two people in it.

もろともに哀れと思え山桜花より外に知る人もなし

It's one of the Ogura Hundred Poems and the only reason why I know about them at all is because I'm watching Chihayafuru (Arata's Fukui accent is very charming! I'm hooked!!) My calligraphy's pretty awful however.

Next up (if I keep to my schedule) will be drafts of my comic short, unless I get distracted by something else.