Sunday, October 23, 2011

B is for Bake-Neko





















This week's entry for AlphaBeasts! is again inspired by Toriyama Sekien's Gazu Hyakki Yakō.

The bake-neko is a giant ghost-cat. According to The Obakemono Project, "...bake-neko could exceed normal cats in size by orders of magnitude, reaching their enormous arms in through doors looking for human prey like an average feline pawing around in a mousehole...."

Her Odd Materials No. 16
Acrylic on a torn-out portion of an illustration from St. Nicholas magazine, August 1920, ~4"x5"


7 comments:

  1. Nice! That original drawing has some pretty wonky perspective, but maybe that just makes the resulting "appropriation" spookier!

    (Are you planning to get all of your beasts from Japan?)

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  2. Thanks, Isaac. I'm pretty wonky myself so I felt right at home in that village. ;-)

    I am kind of thinking of doing all Japanese beasts (I know so little about them, it would be fun to do the research) but I'm not sure I can find them for all of the letters-- we'll see.

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  3. Nice work! Reminds me of Neko-Basu from Totoro.

    Unfortunately, I don't think you'd be able to find Japanese creatures for every English letter.

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  4. Thanks, Lupi. No, it's not looking good for all the letters. :-(

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  5. Maybe you could do a pan-Asian thing, instead of just Japan? There are probably Chinese beasts that start with q and x.

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  6. That's a great idea! Thanks for the tip!

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  7. Perfect time for the fast-approaching Witching Hour.

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