So, this is apparently the week when I steal inspiration from my friends. I got an email this morning pointing me towards Juxtapoz Magazine’s blog post about Takato Yamamoto’s amazing artwork, and ever since I’ve been obsessed, doing nothing but look through page after page of his paintings. This was rendered slightly sketchy, due to the fact that I was at work and a great deal of his pieces are inspired by Japanese rope bondage and S&M. I kept accidentally clicking on the bad ones just as my supervisor was walking by. Sigh.
Disregard of being thought the office perv aside, what attracts me so much to Yamamoto’s paintings is the dreamlike combination of elements to be found in them. As I said, a lot of them draw inspiration from S&M (not many of the ones I’ve put up here, as I didn’t have time to study those as much to see if I liked them.) The influence of that and other erotica is definitely felt, but I’m much more interested in the images from folklore and horror conventions. The drawing style also reads to me as quintessentially Japanese, the tight lines and small details simultaneously evoking things as wide-ranging as horror manga, tattoo art and Hokusai. I love the use of anatomy, the organic details, the mysterious looming presence of the moon. I also love the intensity and simplicity of his palette (which I just wrote as palate– though with drawings like these one might wonder if he can stomach things, or if he is plagued by the monsters he creates.)
I’ve put up a lot of pictures, but it was very hard to edit it down to even this. I strongly urge you to go look at his works elsewhere and see what other things he has to offer. Everything is basically along these lines, but the variations can be rather glorious.
Horror take on Little Red Riding Hood. I love it, queasily. Look at the blood spatters on the post and her leg. I’m so curious, but I’m not even sure I want to know what happened there.
He makes it weirdly beautiful, right?
The blog post also features a pretty interesting interview with him, so I urge you to check it out.
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