Evangeline Than

When I travelled to Japan in February 2006, one thing immediately struck me about the women in Tokyo (the non-Harajuku ones). Boy, did they know how to dress.

They reminded me of Parisian women, immaculate but not cold, feminine but not overtly sexy, a little old-fashioned but not definitely not old. I would have come back with a wardrobe full of clothes, if only the damn things had fit over my wide shoulders and ample bosom.

I didn’t have a camera with me at the time, but I can still remember looking wide-eyed at the women on the street and the department store mannequins, wondering, why, oh why didn’t we have anything like this in Australia?

Now I can show you what I mean. Have a look at the work of Seiko Ohmori (Ohmori is her surname), and her three-dimensional illustrations of women with angel faces and clothes you wish were yours. She makes them from polymer clay, then photographs and digitally manipulates them.

Sources: Seiko Ohmori’s website at http://se.batic2.com/. I first read about Ohmori in Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog at http://drawn.ca/2007/12/30/seiko-ohmori/ (posted December 30th, 2007).

Something I knocked up quickly for Illustration Friday.

When I saw this week’s theme, “detach”, all I could think of were cells dividing. This is a little homage to Gary Larson, but the scientific basis behind his cartoons is probably more sound.