After experiencing a DNA surprise/shock earlier in the year I needed to express my feelings in my artwork. Conception is a representation of how random life can be. A sence of belonging yet somehow not belonging and finally being able to link together those aspects of myself.
So this character has gone through some crazy character development. I started his design a few years ago, well lets say hes matured and went through puberty. I'm so proud to see how far I have come.
Konishi Mansho (1600 - 1644), the last ordained priest to serve in Japan during the prohibition era of the Tokugawa Shogunate (think of the Shusaku Endo novel, "Silence", which was adapted to film by Martin Scorsese in 2016). Exiled from his homeland in 1614, he eventually made his way to Rome and enter a convent to be ordained as a priest. He would later to his home country to minister to the persecuted Christians there, only to be arrested and martyred in 1644. I tried to mimic a traditional ink painting style to invoke the melancholic feel of this homecoming journey.
Water heals and purifies. It also kills and destroys.
Few symbols encompass both the life-giving and death-dealing properties of water as the sacrament of baptism, which represents both the passing of the old self and their rebirth as a new creature (Romans 6:3-11).
Here, the image of death & rebirth is also reinforced by a dragonfly motif; the dragonfly spends the first years of its life in the deep waters as a nymph, and is completely transformed into a new being as it rises to the surface.
Unlike butterflies, a dragonfly undergoes several molting processes after its emergence, showing that, while the creature is already made new, it is not yet perfected, and must grow in its new identity through what is called progressive sanctification.
The work's title refers to the Christian daimyo, Konishi Yukinaga, whose baptismal name is Augustine, and is the primary subject of this image.
#18 Super Peach N64 - Doodle of the day is Super Mario characters in the low polygon angular style from the Nintendo 64. Drawn on magma.com with an iPad Pro
2023, Ballpoint pens on 5” x 8” acid free Moleskine sketchbook paper, Adobe Photoshop colour correction. I was doing pre-purchase research before deciding on a set of noise cancelling earbuds when I landed on the Google Pixel Buds Pro website and found an interesting model in an interesting pose.
