Drawings: Alice and the Geisha

Sketchclub didn't have a theme this week (not that I'm good at keeping up with it anyways...), but I decided to draw my own stuff this week anyways. I always start off with a Col-Erase pencil (in this case I used the colour pink), and when I have sketched everything out, I clean-up my sketch with a blue ball-point pen. Then I did the usual thing of adding a layer of colour over top of my drawing in Photoshop. This is what I came up with:

Alice's Shock


In this scene, Alice has just fallen down the rabbit hole in pursuit of the white rabbit. She tries to go through a small door to chase after him, but she's too big. Alice drinks a shrinking potion (to get through the door), but when she's shrunk, she realizes that she's forgotten the key on the table, so she finds a piece of cake (in my case a chocolate chip cookie), takes a bite and gets bigger again. She grows way too big to get through the door and begins to cry. Her teardrops create The Pool of Tears, which whisks her through the door and off to Wonderland. (For the Alice fans, you might notice that this drawing is in homage to John Tenniel's version. ^_~) When I added the layer of blue to the drawing, I decided to add a bit of white to Alice's eyes and pink to her cheeks to really enhance her look of shock.

Sad Geisha


Okay, I have to admit it: I *love* Geisha's. I love them for their aesthetic value, and I love their dedication to their artistic lifestyle. One of my Flickr contacts (mboogiedown) is always posting absolutely gorgeous photos of authentic Geisha's (Geiko's) and Maiko's, and it's such a delight to peer into this secret world. It's really hard *not* to appreciate the beauty of these women. Geisha's wear a kimono (which can consist of over 10 layers of fabric), all held together with an obi (the large "belt" that is tied around their waist). They also wear geta (wooden sandals) which can be almost a foot high off the ground, so their body movement becomes quite limited and restrictive. However, when they do have to move around to dance, they can get quite expressive poses with simple shapes like the tilt of a head or a bent arm (like this photo or this one). I love playing around with these shapes while I'm drawing Geisha's. This drawing is also a commentary on the life of a Geisha. I will never know what it is like to dedicate my entire life to mastering the arts 24/7, but I can just imagine that you'd have to sacrifice a lot. I think there is such a beauty to Geisha's, yet I think there is an incredible sadness about them too. So, my Geisha is feeling sad as she lets beauty fall away.

I guess I have Geisha's on the mind more than usual because of the Hannari: Geisha Modern documentary premieres in the next couple of weeks.

If you would like to read more information about Geisha's, the Immortal Geisha site is great for information (for instance, did you know that the first Geisha were men?) and they have a great forum, too. If you're looking for a great read, pick up Geisha: A Life by Mineko Iwasaki, a true biography written by a real Geisha who lived in Kyoto. Her story is fascinating, and she hopes to squash the common stereotype that all Geisha are prostitutes... a stereotype that is held up as fact in the well-known Memoirs of a Geisha book by Arthur Golden. Even though the life of Sayuri is practically stolen from Golden's interview with Iwasaki, I still think it's a good book, and the movie is gorgeous.