ISSUE 02
I booked a couple of days in a guest house surrounded by mountains just to write and draw for this newsletter. :)
The place I stay is a cozy, slightly rundown budget guest house run by a couple — it feels like staying in someone’s home. Found it a few years ago around this time; very chill vibes. Bring earplugs for the loud river and occasional cars at night. It’s my secret Tokyo getaway, so I only shared the location in this email. They even make me vegan breakfast and dinner! Also the owner gave me the room with the best view, so I could work and enjoy the nature.
[location has been shared via email]
These are the flash pieces in which I have incorporated the dragon embryo, when I first got the idea.
✦ THE DRAGON EMBRYO
Today's newsletter I want to talk about the dragon embryos of the Haunted Tea House universe. Exciting! I haven't introduced this concept yet, but it's already shown up in some of my flash pieces.
For now, there are 5 dragons in this universe. They all start as embryos, born from dragon flowers :O!!! Nobody ever knows when or where one will be born. The only certainty is that a new one comes only when one of the five dies.
I'll leave the dragon flowers for next newsletter. For now, the embryos.
The embryos don't carry a soul of their own. So a chosen person carries the embryo, protecting it, until their body and soul can fully merge with it. When that happens, the carrier becomes the dragon.
Since the embryo has to be carried, it always lives inside something — a sword, a dagger, whatever the carrier can keep on them at all times.
Now I'm playing with what other vessels could look like: hair pins, necklaces, keys, boxes?
I quickly scanned my phone gallery to see if I can find a few items to inspire me, and noted down a few ideals in my notebook, then made a little collage of photos that would help me get in the mood, and doodled for a few minutes.
My process is very intuitive — over the years I've learned not to spend too much time picking out references. Anything that catches my eye goes into the collage.
You can see I used one of the duck containers as a reference. I didn't use one of the dragons though.
I cleaned up and developed the messy sketches, and I was almost sure I'd develop the necklace flash further, when I had a vision for a hair pin! So I quickly doodled a character with it.
I feel like my brain often works like AI when it comes to creating images — I start with some abstract forms and shapes, just trying to capture the vision in my head, and then start rendering it.
For this I haven't used any references.
And the final!
In the end I removed the veil that was covering half of her face, as I found it hard to make it readable in a tattoo design(altho I wanted her to look like a badass villain). In the end I decided to keep her appearance quite simple, to give the hair pin the spotlight.
And now … imagine! you are a vampire, at school, looking at your history textbook. You find a portrait of a lady vampire who ruled the kingdom centuries ago with an imperial hairpin with a dragon relic!
Maybe she could have used it as a weapon, maybe I can even try transforming it into a sword? That would be nice, maybe for another newsletter :)
