I was invited to create an illustrated story for the new zine produced by ToCo, on the subject of a ‘thing’ or ‘mono’ in Japanese, and as I’m not really a sequential artist, I had to think quite hard about what to make. What story did I want to tell? I’ve been drawing a lot of food while I’ve been in Japan, and decided to do something based on that.
I drew up sketches of a story without words, about using your own chopsticks, and taking them with you to eat out. I wanted to show that this works for every type of Japanese meal and then we don’t need to use so many disposable chopsticks.
For the final artwork I painted with black ink and drew with a fine black pen, and really enjoyed the monochrome process.
An exhibition of the artwork for the zine was held in Roppongi at Tokyo Chapter, and I framed up some digital prints of my illustrations.
Something about food in black and white really appealed to me and I’m thinking of doing a series like this…
Hope you’ll consider taking your own chopsticks too, next time you go out for Japanese (or any Asian) food!
