2 - amabie

vision/concept, influences, work in progress pictures 

Written Sept 12th, 2023, covering art from May 24th 2021 - Jun 4th, 2021

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　　 *:･ﾟ✧*:･✧･ﾟ

watercolor and gouache painting of a girl figure with 3 fins instead of legs.

The amabie, a three finned sea being with a beak. Said to coincide with pandemic. Legend says that if you look upon the image of an amabie, it helps prevent pandemic spread. 

CONCEPT:

This was the first of the humanoid yokai that I tried to paint, and so a lot about this painting was a style test for the rest of the paintings. Like how to balance the washes and more detailed gouache details, how detailed the images shoudld be, and how much they should break the shape of the circle frame. 

The legend of the amabie and pandemic made this yokai more popular in the last few years. I represented the amabie's dual nature of abundance and disease by showing the fish in the background: the L fish being dead and the R fish living in quantity. I realize now that this is very Joseph and the Technicolor Dream Coat! 

I also wanted to integrate my cousin, Lia, as the amabie, making my version more humanoid, more mermaid like than the amabie images i've seen. The hair feels like Moana, where the hair is the ocean. Lia is my youngest cousin, and I appreciate her posing for me!! 

I asked my cousin this week what she thought about being in the book now and she texted me "It has been so interesting to see how this project has come together from posing on zoom in 2021 to now. I got really feel like I was part of the process and I'm very excited for it to come out soon." Thanks Li!

 

picture of me in the mirror, holding my hands clasped in front of me, posing for the amabie pose screenshot of thumbnail images of my cousin lia, age 11 posing for the amabie. Images are timestamped from May 2021

 

INFLUENCES:


screenshot of google image results for amabie showing a wide variety of 1800/historical and modern drawn images of amabies. generally a fishy/bird looking creature with fins and 3 fish tails.

I generally referenced popular culture images of amabie! Nothing in particular, because I knew that I wanted mine to be a particular shape (triangular, emerging from a circular frame) and more humanoid in general. Sometimes ppl will mistakenly refer to amabie as a mermaid, even tho it doesn't really fit the mermaid archetype of western mythological imagination. But that's kind of how I drew mine, lol. Mostly cause i wanted to stretch the humanoid yokai, and embed my family. 

PROCESS PHOTOS

pencil sketches of amabie, a creature with a kind of fishy bird head and three fish tails on their bottom halff

initial research doodles. ryuoo on the top, amabie on the bottom. I hadn't started my practice of noting exactly where i was referencing yet. 

pencil sketch of a young girl with 3 fishy fins instead of feet. She has a beak and long wavy hair.

my final sketch. with general pose and features. 

picture of my amabie painting halfway through the process

Midway painting shot. I put down a thin layer of gouache, using it like watercolor to make the highly pigmented wash backgrounds.  I also was deciding what tones of blue I wanted to mix into the midtones, since the cool greys would be consistent through all 4 colorways. Ended up going with ultramarine deep! 

picture of my hand holding the final amabie painting, cut out with an xacto knife around the edge

final painting, with gouache details. I cut it out with an xacto knife much later to scan it in. 

Key Memories?

Jami and I did a talk with the JASC hosted by Emma Saito Lincoln called Yokai Banzai while I was working on this painting where we talked about Yokai and diaspora and amabie with Kiyoshi Mino! August 2021. 

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　　 *:･ﾟ✧*:･✧･ﾟ