Artist Matthew Meyer has been living in the remote Japanese village of Echizen for a little over four years. In that time, he has collected and translated hundreds of obscure pieces of folklore from the local population, particularly those focused around "yokai" — a breed of ancient, mythical creature with the power to shapeshift. According to Matthew, there are "hundreds and hundreds" of unique yokai, ranging from ghastly to cuddly, goofy to downright terrifying. Eek! The book that he's creating will feature a selection of just one hundred, accompanied by his beautiful, full-color illustrations. How exactly does one deduce thousands of years of Japanese folklore into a single picture? Matthew was kind enough to let us peek in on his creative process. Read on to see how he does it.

My inspiration comes from old folk tales, woodblock prints, and paintings from hundreds of years ago. One of primary sources for information and imagery comes from the Gazu Hyakki Yakō and other works by yokai anthologer Toriyama Sekien. I also collect stories from other ancient authors. The lack of information on Yokai in English means I have to do a lot of translation, but it is all fun work. My most entertaining source for stories has been my wife's grandmother, other family members, and locals from my rural town. I've been collecting stories for the past 3+ years, so I have quite a lot to build upon.

After collecting my sources, I need to write down a brief description to fit onto a single page in the book. Some yokai could fill multiple volumes of a book, and it's incredibly hard to choose what to keep and what to trim. Other yokai have the exact opposite problem, with little more than one or two sentences and a picture to their name in all of Japanese literature. Cutting, trimming, and writing down a single page for each of one hundred yokai took about the first three months of 2011.

After I finished writing my descriptions of the yokai, I spent the next three months making illustrations for them. I've filled up two sketch books with various drawings, trying to come up with the best illustrations I can. It's often difficult to try and capture a mythological creature in just a single image, and I've worn more than a few pencils and erasers down to nubs! Living here for over four years means I have a pretty large and varied collection of photo reference covering Japanese scenery and places, so it wasn't hard to place the illustrations in realistic scenarios.

Once the illustrations were all finished, I scanned them into my PC. Now I am on the third and most time-consuming part of the process: painting each picture. I paint them with my Wacom tablet and GIMP, and it takes roughly a full day to complete one painting — a bit more for the most complex ones, and a bit less for the simplest ones. This part of the process will last until the end of November, when I'll have finished all 100 paintings. Fortunately, I have someone to keep me company while I work. :)
Completion

When all of the paintings are finished. the final steps will be to insert them into my book file and send it off to the printer for publishing. Providing there are no snares in the final review and printing processes, the book should be complete and my backers' hands by the end of 2011 or very beginning of 2012. I can't wait!