I just found a book I used to love when I was little called Issunboshi. It's an old Japanese fable about a little one inch boy who fights insects and frogs and saves a princess. My parents used to read this to me and I'd freak out and color Issunboshi with a blue marker because I was so obsessed with him. I had forgotten that I'd taken the beat up copy of the book from my mom's house last time i was home, and looking through it was oddily inspiring. Most of the drawings are mediocre, but I am into the depictions of the Oni. The colors really seem to have informed a lot of my current sensibility. The Oni are all fuscia, orange, and tiger print, and there's psyched out watercolor bleeds and grotesgue, dopey looking skin everywhere. The book is oversized, but I scanned some smaller parts.
these are giving me more ideas for the first issue of TCO.
