Today I’d like to share a special painting I made to commemorate me and my BF moving in together! It’s another Hello Kitty art work where she is dressed in a traditional Japanese wedding outfit with her BF Dear Daniel. Although we ourselves aren’t married and merely registered partners for now, I went for this wedding theme as it wasn’t easy to find something romantic featuring Hello Kitty and with a traditional Japanese twist.
Nihonga Painting
My Friday noon classes resumed last September after months of being suspended because of COVID. It was then that I jumped at the opportunity to go back to doing some traditional Japanese painting known as Nihonga. What better time would this be to introduce my Hello Kitty painting!
I wanted a gold background for the wedding theme. As such, my tutor Sugawara-sensei suggested a choice of using gold leaf or going for Momigami. This latter method involves covering the paper with a thick layer of watercolor, letting it dry and coating another color on top. Once dry, we crumple the paper up to create a wrinkly marbled effect. It’s been a while since doing momigami and hence I opted for this to see what would happen. In my case I firstly went for gold, then purple. Here is more information about momigami from a previous work, Momiji Autumn Leaves.
Drawing Kitty and Daniel
After spreading out the paper on the wooden frame, I added a layer of yellow watercolor pigment followed by some gold. Whilst waiting for the paint to dry, I traced the image on tracing paper and when dried I went over the outline with some red carbon paper on the newly-gold background.
Paint Away!
Now I was ready to paint! Before that I traced the red carbon outline with some black permanent Sumie marker which is derived from black charcoal. The coloring was then quite straightforward. All that was needed was white, red and indigo! Whilst ensuring an even coat, layer after layer of paint was added. It was important that the paint was completely dry in between or else the layer underneath would move. And now!
What a kawaii piece this turned out to be! During the past two summers since joining the Friday noon classes, I would attend Nihonga workshops in the summer or autumn. This unfortunately didn’t happen this year due to Covid, and now I’m glad I was able to pursue it over the course of the past few weeks whilst lessons continued. With the classes scheduled to resume in mid-January (fingers crossed), I may like to do another one for fun again!
My Kawaii Quarter 