Kirin masks.

[merimask]

Well, I finished them.  My Kirin.  It turns out that the one I did totally as an experiment is my favorite.   This is the black kirin.

You can get a better idea of how the horn works in the photos below.  Of all the kirin I did, this one was the closest to traditional, with the forked horn and scales and even the dark coloring.


The one below is the commission piece...I just couldn't talk the guy into a forked horn.  He wanted it to look something like my Kohaku mask, so that's how I did it.


This last one (below) was also a bit indulgent.  After I finished it I thought "TOO much white!" so I broke it up with some happy pale blue swirly stuff.  I was really thinking "12 Kingdoms" for this one.

You see how well my forked horn design worked?  I love it when a solution to a design problem works so easily.

So, those are Kirin.  I'm going to print out Wikipedia's explanation of what Kirin are and display it next to these, to cut down on annoying questions at shows ("Where's the other antler on that deer?").

And, in other news, it was another glorious day.  Char and I went for a bike ride in Canada and she was Princess Many Bugs Down Shirt.  I was One Bug Went Up Nose.

And!  Just because they looked so damn pretty; my tulips.


There you go!  Happy Spring!!

*smooch*

Comments

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Oh my, those are lovely. The swirly blue filigree tracing on the white one is gorgeous, but the color combos of mane and scales on the black one is just absolutely stunning.

And if you ever felt like going really 3-D texture mad, you could always try a variant with a a huge mane like this guy. ;)

[merimask.livejournal.com]

Oh hey yeah! Kirin beer! I used to LOOOOVE Kirin beer in college.

I always was crazy about that logo, too. It's so elegant. Maybe, I could do one (kirin mask) with a big golden mane like that...it'd be so dramatic.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

I'm not a beer person, but their logo made a huge impression on me when I was at an impressionable age, thanks to wasting so much of my childhood watching the Japanese-language station in Hawai'i. The commercials straight from the olde country were always some of the trippiest bits of programming (I swear I still get earwormed with the Lipovitan jingle every time I hit the Asian groceries, and I haven't even seen that ad in twenty years!), and Kirin had one of the coolest ones -- there was an animated sequence with the logo-kirin, drawn in the same style of course, galloping through the clouds...

Man, I wish I could find a clip of that on YouTube or something. I'm sure the production quality wouldn't hold up compared to my memory, but in my mind's eye I can still see it and he looked so very magical and elegant in motion...