It’s Pinnotheres again
today! Seckmea has totally been carrying
this thing in my absence, and carrying it far better than I ever could myself. So happy she is here!
I’ve built up a few projects to post about, and the first is
my most recent obake (Japanese shapeshifter) drawing. I remember saying something about how my next
obake character sketch would be of the hook-haired woman (hari-onago), and I have
a hand sketch of her here that just won’t be anything else:
 |
| Argggggg! |
Somehow, this one didn’t make it to my digital workspace,
though, as I was hoping it would. It has
remained in pencil and I really can’t bring myself to ink or digitize it. I don’t know, maybe the scratchy-sketchy
pencil work just feels more suited to her and her freaky hair, or maybe I
haven’t found what’s right for her yet.
If I had more skill in converting stuff like this to digital, I’d
probably not worry too much about losing the feel of this character in the
process. I do believe, however, that
sometimes you have to let the piece tell you what medium it wants to work
through.
Enough philosophizing, let’s get to the obake story! I love ghost stories, and the hari-onago is a
really creepy one! Apparently, she preys
on young men in particular. She appears
on roads in the moonlight, disguised as a beautiful young woman, and upon
targeting a male traveler, begins to laugh at him. If he laughs back, she unleashes her long,
barbed tresses and uses them to dispatch him (source: www.obakemono.com).
My hari-onago is in the process of attacking the viewer,
each lock of serpentine hair ending in a barbed fish hook. I don’t know what the obake’s true face is
supposed to look like, so I left it largely featureless, which frankly I find deeply
disturbing. I think it might be a large
part of what makes the Slenderman meme-monster-thing so terrifying (check out
the creepypasta wiki if you’ve managed to miss this one). You can imagine just about anything going on
behind that blank façade of his. This
sketch is a little more expressive, but I still find it far more frightening
than something with fangs and flaming eyes.
Traditional ghosts scare me a lot more than modern movie
ghosts. They follow such specific and yet
alien logic, and there’s something disturbing about that, too…as though the
really old stories are letting us in on the workings of a complex and
malevolent world just beyond our perception.
Uh…nevermind…NEXT UP…the kitsune, or fox-spirit. Excited to show this one in a few days! The project is done, just thinking about what
I want to say…
Love, art, and summer spookies by,
Pinnotheres.
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