Susano and Amaterasu

This was the final piece, and the piece all the stamp practices and other Lichtenstein pop art-esque works were building up to. I thought I'd go for a sort of cultural mish-mash, taking the Japanese legend of Susano-Oh and Amaterasu's feud, but doing it in a more modern style and with modern references (the pose might be familiar to some). East meets West, or more East and West collide into each other as they run down the street. A few things inspired this turn, enough for me to write a big old report on everything leading up to this piece, but in short it was basically Lichtenstein and pop art (obviously), traditional Japanese woodblock prints, and the works of the Glasgow Boys- notably E.A Hornel- and the late 19thC craze for Japanese items in general where you saw Western art painting Japanese people, clothes, pictures and more in their pieces- be it in the background, foreground or otherwise.

The differences I made was that I tried to arrange the dots on a contour- that is mapping around the shape of the body for a more 3-D effect, and varying the sizes of the dots to fit the shades better in tighter spaces, or filling in wider, lighter spaces. Perhaps not a grand difference, but I think it helps it stand out. Was certainly pleased with how it turned out, though wasn't so pleased to find out the deadline I tried to finish it for got pushed back a few weeks. On the one hand I got to clean it up some more, but on the other it got to the point where it felt like I was in a holding pattern of polishing it. Ah well, such is life.

Materials Used: Pencils, acrylic paints, cylinder stamps, and a whole lot of practice pieces.
Time Taken: Perhaps 4 weeks overall, taking up most of December and early January.