DPI #98
First I want to thank the people who left comments on my last illustration. I love hearing from everyone and the support means a lot to me.
So, as I mentioned, after 6 weeks of hoping, I finally received my birthday present - 8 issues of DPI magazine!!
What a treasure. I’m especially loving issues 86 and 96 (Nicoletta Ceccoli covers) . Today, I’ll show you around the newest issue - #98.
with Mari Kubota on the cover. (top row, 2nd from left).
Above is a piece called Bento from Susan Burghart. She’s from Washington state, but did part of her schooling in London, so she has some posters in the magazine for bands and plays going on in London. Many of the articles in DPI are in Chinese and English, thankfully. Bento was a commissioned work and she says, “I draw a lot of influence in particular from Japanese art - from wood block illustration to kimono fabris and origami paper.”
Here is our cover artist, Mari Kubota. She’s from Hyogo, Japan. “She is creating dolls, picture books, and postcards for her original brand, “marie”.” This article has very interesting use of the English language as it’s an interview from a Chinese magazine to a Japanese artist and then sort of translated into English. What I got out of it is that she uses Gouache in her art because of the colors. Her inspiration for her newest work is a “sad girl’s wedding”.
They asked her “For you, what is beauty?What things can’t you bear with?”
Her answer: “Something that is shut tightly”. When something is out, they get dirt and not beautiful any more. I try to bear for anything.”
Sort of poetic, really.
This is Mizna Wada. Don’t miss seeing her dolls on her website. She’s a freelance illustrator from Tokyo and has loved horror comics since childhood. She’s been using the current style for about 10 years and she works in Print Gocco, acrylic, watercolor, cut paper, and dolls. A lotof her work has a circus theme and the one pictured here, from what I can understand, is about a contest of beautiful and talented people. Here is her concept of beauty.
“Beauty is stuff not perfect. I think that each peculiar distortion that has it creates beauty. Or beauty is balanced stuff of Yin and Yang. I dislike the thing which lean to one side of either.”
I’m not sure if this is an ad or an article, but it’s about noodoll and I liked the drawings.
and lastly, here is another fashion spread:
This is the designer Doris Kalchmann from Austria. She has a pdf file of her dpi article so you can get an idea of how the magazine reads.
Here’s the page on this issue of DPI magazine on the DPI website. Looks like they have a new issue out (#99)l on new art and design from Japan. I wonder what #100 will bring?
As soon as I can tear myself away from this issue, I think I’ll give it away to a commenter on the blog. Stay tuned if you’re interested.