Yeah, yeah. I'm not around much right now. You'll have to forgive me. Been working on a bunch of things that have kept me away from doing anything interesting to talk about.

Umm... It's warm. Cherry blossoms are blooming all around Tokyo and I'm hitting a big party this weekend to soak it all in. Will have pictures of that. Maybe. If I'm not too drunk.

A test piece I did for the Fairy Tales thing that I'm half done. You can find the colour version in a recent issue of Previews so I figure it's okay to post these. Both pencils and inks.

TAK

Made the trip to Ginza on Tuesday. I got off the wrong station so I had a bit of a hike to the gallery but it was a nice day so I wasn't complaining. Found the gallery pretty easily and, since no one else was there, got to take it all in pretty much by myself. Ahh, the benefits of not having a real job.

Anyway, the gallery isn't all that big but it's a nice clean and open space. There were about 60 pieces in total, all in nice frames and sized at around B4. They were lined up tight together in 2 parallel rows across all 4 walls. All pieces were priced at 105,000 yen which is equal to about a grand US or Canadian. A steal if you ask me. Oh, not all. A handful were not for sale. I went on the second day and a third were already taken so I'm sure by the end of the week they'll all be spoken for. I was tempted to purchase one but the subject matter was, well, not exactly user-friendly? I woulda jumped at the chance if any were from either his Blade or Ohikkoshi works. I was hoping they would have prints or some light items like that but nadda. They had the artbook though.

I'm pretty miminal in terms of mediums I use so seeing an entire gallery filled to the brim with nothing but pencil drawings was something quite special to me. I've had the fortune of seeing original pages from various artists over the last year but this stuff took detail and subtlety to the next level. Reproductions rarely do the actual work justice and this was an example, case and point. It's quite something seeing erased lines covered with the final strokes and the problem solving process all right there happening in front of my face. The faces were so crisp and figures so well defined. The work was B4 sized, yes, but they came across much much bigger. Pretty outstanding. I wish I could describe it better to you but there's just no way I'm afraid. I'm getting too emotional about this so I'll stop...

All I know is, I'll definitely be making another trip before the show ends.

TAK

Went out shoppin' today. I needed to pick up some supplies like drafting pens and some ink for my nibs. If you know what Tokyu Hands is, I went there since they have pretty much anything you'd ever want in terms of stationary. Had a quick bowl of ramen afterwards, played some Tekken 6 and got my ass royally whooped (I need to play as someone other than Law for a change...) and, finally, made a trip to a bookstore for kicks. I ended up dropping about 70 bucks on impulse buys. Anyway, 4 books in total plus some posters:

First is William Gibson's Pattern Recognition. I wanted to get his newest release Spook Country but the oversized softcover was around 40 bucks so I decided to get this instead since it was about a quarter the price. I have no idea what it's about but the cover looked cool so...

The blueish book is Asano Inio's 2nd and final book to Oyasumi Pun Pun. I got the special edition version so it came with 2 keychains. I dunno. I'm a sucker. My love for Asano Inio knows no bounds and any book by him will make me drop yen in a second. The first book was thoroughly amazing and I expect this second half to blow my mind in equal parts.

Third is Hiroyuki Samura's Blood Hurley's Carriage. He's another creator I have no qualms about giving money to. It's a one-off book about an orphan girl who is sold into sexual slavery... or something to that effect. I haven't read it yet but, uh, it's kinda messed up. I'm gonna use this as a segway for something else below. One second...

And lastly, is a ref book on factories, pipes and all things industrial. This was the best find of the day for me. I can stop scouring the net for shitty low-rez images now. Yay.

Anyway, the segway.

I was touring Ginza galleries with my friend Aleks a few months ago and happened to walk into a small gallery that caters to erotic and bondage art. It's called Vanilla and, at the time, it was showing paintings, prints and illustrations from local and international talent. Very cool stuff. They had flyers for future shows lying around so I sifted through them nonchalantly when I found one for a Samura show. Like, WHAT. It starts this week and you can see info and artwork examples from it here. What they'll be showing are originals from his artbook Hitodenashi no Koi (The Love of the Brute) which I never ended up buying despite my penchant for throwing money at the man. This show? SO there. I'll tell you how bad you missed out. HA!

Also, been feeling earthquakes all weekend. Japan rocks.

TAK

A quiet Sunday night. About to juggle 2 projects at once plus a third on the side for good measure. I think I needed deadlines again to kick my ass into gear since I spent the last year doing things purely on my own time and in my own way. I'm finding I've been sorta lethargic about drawing since the new year started and been focusing on other things to keep my mind occupied. I can't multi-task so it's been a choice of either work or life but not at the same time. Which doesn't really work when you're a freelancer...

Short post. Mosre soonish.

TAK