Category: Art Gallery

Art Gallery – Spy X Family X Kimono

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What’s this? I drew an actual male character in male kitsuke for once? Alert the presses! I was in the mood to draw more comfy anime kimono fanart, and ended up with these three perfect precious idiots. Very capable idiots,  but idiots nonetheless.

My original plan for this was just to draw Anya because I love her so much. But as I started on it, I realised it would be even cuter if it I took a riff on a traditional family portrait. I like to think they’re celebrating Anya’s shichigosan (even though we don’t know exactly how old she is, we know she’s in the right range).

Once I had that in mind, their outfits sort of fell into place. Anya’s in a bright and cheerful pink furisode (which admittedly I should have tucked at the sleeves as well as the shoulders, but I realised it too late) with a cosmos pattern. She’s holding them in the first season closing credits, and they fit the pink theme well. They’re also said to represent pure and innocent love, which is what Anya feels for her family. If you look closely at her obi and zori, what initially looks like a fairly traditional black and gold obi with a geometric design is actually a tessellation of her favourite snack; peanuts!

Yor had to be red and gold with a rose motif, of course. Nothing less for our Briar Rose Princess. Her updo hairstyle already suits kimono so well, she was possibly the most natural fit for this picture. I gave her a yabane motif obi as a nod to her secret life as an assassin; I know she doesn’t use a bow and arrow, but I wanted something a bit less literal. Maybe she’s got some daggers tucked into her obi?

Loid was a bit more of a challenge, since he’s such a blank slate. In the end, I stuck to the usual colours of his clothing and think it works well. He provides a nice neutral counterpoint to Yor’s elegance and Anya’s vibrancy. Of course, as much as I don’t condone piercing holes in your kimono, I had to include his WISE lapel pin.

Mini Washitsu 2026

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I am no stranger to making Japanese-inspired dioramas (see here and here), but until this time they’ve not been particularly accurate. The first one was assembled from literal junk including a cardboard box, and the second was a kitbash into an “inspired” home. But I was itching to do something a bit more detailed, proportional, and accurate than my previous attempts, so I hauled some of my miniature supplies from Montreal to California and got to work.

I started out with a basic MDF room-box kit with two walls and a floor. From there, I constructed the inner walls to create the tokonoma, butsudan alcove, and decorative shelving using square balsa dowels I hand-staned, and pine craft rectangles. I wallpapered the whole thing in decorative rice paper. The tatami ended up stumping me for a while, and then I remembered I had this beige textured shelf liner left over from organising the pantry. A bit of beige paper underneath it and some washi tape to form the borders, and voila. Itty bitty tatami committee! I divided it into typically balanced proportions, ending up with a room that’s four and a half tatami, plus the toko and shelving spaces.

Once the room structure was complete, it was time for the fun part – decorating! This is always my favourite part of making a miniature or diorama, since it’s where things really start to come to life. They go from looking like boxes to looking lived-in. I like to imagine the resident of this room is a young woman trying to balance modern and traditional life based on her hobbies (calligraphy, reading poetry). She knows she’s too old for it, but she still puts her childhood hina dolls out for Girl’s Day and still pays her respects to her family altar, but she’s also busy enough that she picks up pre-made meals on her way home from university. I don’t generally imagine this much of a resident in my scenes, but every detail I added here just kind of helped flesh her out, what can I say?

The details are a combination of printables from Etsy (links to the shops below), Re-Ment miniatures (the hina dolls, zori, and butsdan set, as well as the onigiri in her bento box), and a few small items I picked up from specialty shops on our recent trip out to Torrance. The tiny blue and white ginger jar was quite possibly the most expensive individual element here, at nearly twenty dollars, but it’s so stunning in person I knew I had to have it.

The greenery is all from MGA’s MiniVerse DIY sets. The ikebana was a kitbash of a few flower sets, the bonsai trunk was handmade and the leaves came from a strawberry kit, the fig tree and small plants in the shelving unit were just placed in as-is, and so was the tiny koi in the bowl with lilies. They’re not quite to 1/12 scale but I think there’s a lot of leeway to be had with plants, since they’re never one fixed size anyway.

Please enjoy exploring this tiny space as much as I loved creating it!

Printables came from the following  Etsy shops, but I’m afraid I’ve lost the references as to what came from where.

As for the Re-Ment miniatures and MGA’s MiniVerse; they can both be found on Amazon.

 This post contains affiliate link(s). If you choose to purchase, I receive a small rebate or commission which goes to the continued maintenance of this site. 

Art Gallery – Kuromi & My Melody

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Full confession, I am team Kuromi all the way. With her resurgence in popularity lately, I am over the moon with the amount of merch and cute art floating around, even if it does occasionally have her best frenemy involved. I started this piece intending to just make cute papercraft-style art of Kuromi in kimono by herself, but have to admit she felt a bit lonely so I did the two of them. They’re so darned cute together I don’t regret a moment of it. Also, the pom-poms on Kuromi’s collar are actually cute little official My Melody bells. I couldn’t help myself, even if nobody else would have noticed!

 

Rock Lady no wafuku fanart

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Oh look, I’m back on my nonsense of putting queer or queer-coded female characters in wafuku! If you’re not sure what I mean, feel free to check out my old Sailor Uranus/Sailor Neptune or Steven Universe kimono fanart…


Keith and I recently watched Rock is a Lady’s Modesty (ロックは淑女レディの嗜みでして, Rokku wa Redi no Tashinami deshite), which is a huge mouthful and is usually referred to as simply Rock Lady. It’s about four very proper, lady-like private-school girls who secretly get together and form a hardcore instrumental rock band, and it is absolutely fantastic. If you like music-related anime, do check it out.

Two of the characters, Lilisa (blonde) and Shiraya (lavender) are both in their school’s respective tea ceremony clubs and as soon as I saw them in kimono I knew I had to draw this. Of course, the kimono they wear in the show are very subdued iromuji, but I wanted to express their “real” personalities through their ensembles. Throughout the show, each one is represented by a flower so of course those motifs carried through, and then I referenced each of their instruments in one way or another by their motifs; Shiraya the bassist has a repeating pick shape on her obi, Otoha the drummer is holding drumsticks and has a tsuzumi on her hakama, Lilisa the guitarist has a fret and string design on her obi, and Tina the keyboardist has a repeated keyboard motif on her obi and hakama hem. Of course, I had to put them on a stage too.

I really enjoyed doing this, and I hope you like it as well!

Katsura Ningyo – Japanese Doll with Six Wigs

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I’m still in California, which means still no access to my kimono, but I do have something utterly charming to share with you today! I have wanted one of these Japanese Dolls with Six Wigs for as long as I can remember, having stumbled across one on eBay years ago. Unfortunately, they’re slightly awkward to ship due to the wooden box and often in very bad shape due to years of play and/or neglect. They were created primarily for the post-occupation tourist market, as little souvenirs to bring home for your sweetheart or daughter. Most often the doll’s name was Hanako, but I have also seen Fukiyo. There was also a Noh-theatre style male doll who is much harder to find.

I recently found out that Goodwill auctions off items online and when I saw this one that would ship here to California. Her box was in rough shape, broken in places and missing a lid. I also suspect it’s been repaired at some point in the past, as I’ve never seen one in this arrangement of six wigs on one side and the doll on the other – the doll is almost always in the middle of the box with three wigs on either side. However, the box is really secondary here – the doll herself and most importantly the wigs looked to be in quite reasonable condition, especially for the under ten dollars the bidding was at. The wigs are the most frequently damaged pieces, as they’re so small and delicate. I threw out a bid and left it to chance, and somehow nobody else bid. I guess Goodwill isn’t quite as well-established for the Japanese art and history community as eBay is! They even included this lovely folded furoshiki gift box. I haven’t had the heart to unfold it yet, it’s just so cute as it is.

The first step was cleaning up the doll and creating some sort of a display base for her. Her face was very dirty and I’m not sure if she ever had a stand of any sort, but she definitely is not built to hold herself up. Her body is made of stiff paper that’s crumpled over the years, and her hands and feet are held on with very thin wire that won’t support her weight. Cleanup was thankfully very easy, I simply ran a moist cotton swab very gently over her face and it brought her from a dingy grey to a lovely bright white. Unfortunately the gofun over her face is cracked on one side, but I still find her adorable. The base was made out of a decorative wood plaque and a chopstick, of all things! I simply drilled through the plaque, glued the chopstick in at the correct height, and then cut the end off. It tucks up into her kimono and holds her quite solidly, but she’s very easy to remove. Repairing the box was easy – a bit of wood glue, some tape to hold things together as the glue set, and voila. The wigs themselves needed hardly any attention, I just smoothed out some errant hairs with my finger tips.

I will fully admit that katsura (traditional-type wigs) and traditional hairstyles in general are not something I’m particularly knowledgeable about. If anyone can tell me what wig or hairstyle these are meant to represent, I would be forever grateful. I’m fairly certain the one with the yellow front is meant to replicate a male chonmage style, like a performer would wear for playing a male role, and the one with the blue comb seems to be a sort of tsubushi shimada, but I may very well be wrong!  Here are some close-ups and detail photos of each of the wigs.

I am so happy I finally got my hands on this little darling and can’t wait to introduce her to my other rescued vintage dolls back home.