Kintsugi {Process Post}

Last night I dreamed a very chuuni dream...= v= Ehe~heh... I mean lets talk about next month's Patreon theme and postcard!

So April's postcard and Patreon theme is Kintsugi meaning "gold repair, sorta". My Kintsugi girl is reserved with a serious look. She dresses simply but her clothing has hints of the pottery cracks. 

I first thought of this theme when looking for a way to repair a teapot (seriously haha, April's theme meant to be something else). When I saw images of the repairs online, the feeling of preservation and love for the art struck me to the core and I immediately must do a Patreon theme on it! 

When designing Kintsugi, my natural instinct was to design a craftsperson who repairs pots. Hence, in the initial sketch, she could be wearing overall pants. But I wasn't feeling it because I can only draw her making repairs or just doing pottery things. I also thought about making her a doll with golden cracks on her leg but in the end, I didn't go with it because it will over complicate the idea.

She is just a collector an appreciator of kintsugi so she is drawn cradling a bowl or using a teacup. I struggle really hard to really represent kintsugi. Reading posts, most people talk about kintsugi not being purposefully broken to achieve a look, but more like appreciating the beauty in something that is broken. I wanted to add accents of flowers to show that.

For the postcard design, I wanted to go more minimal with it and just having hits of gold and broken pottery surrounding her. (to be honest, the final effect was unintentional, I wanted the pottery to slowly look like its coming together to form a plate but I felt that what was drawn look feels clean and impactful so I kept it!) The back of the postcard will be a simple "kintsugi" type and cracked design made of gold foil. I hope that it will look super nice in the end! I wanted to put gold foil on the front of the postcard as well but it was getting really complicated and this design was more about holding back on details. 

Its a little wordy post today but Kintsugi was a theme that was really fun for me to draw so I rambled a lot. From the more simple design to the color choice, it felt nice to line and color her. ; w; ' I enjoyed drawing her so much that immediately afterwards, I sketched her again! haha 

Hope that you enjoy her theme as much as I did! Melan off to work on...work ; ;