May 4

Thermal Printing – A cool new thing?

By accident, I kinda stumbled upon the world of thermal printing or better say, its use for tiny printers which you can take along with you to make stickers, notes and scrapbooking with. Thermal printing itself is actually something we all have come in contact with in the form of receipts you get at a cash register. But using it for private creative projects was a totally new concept to me. It was intriguing enough that I wanted to try it out. But after doing some basic research I found out that thermal printers come with their own advantages and disadvantages. So let me introduce you to the Phomemo M02 Pro and tell you what I like and what I don’t like about it.

Let’s start with the specs of the M02Pro, it’s 3,3 * 3,2 * 1,6 inches and fits effortlessly in the palm of my hand. Paired with its lightweight of about 400g, it lives up to its name and makes a very portable printer, that fits into almost every handbag or even the pockets of a jacket. I could not find any definitive answer as to how long the device holds up, other than Phomemo themselves saying “can print 6 rolls of paper continuously when fully charged”, which I could not really test out… But when I was using it to make about 10 cards, it never died on me. I charged it overnight and was able to use it multiple times the day after. So I would say it’s at least decent for normal usage :)It connects wirelessly via Bluetooth with any android or apple device, in my review here I used an iPadPro and a Samsung Note and it worked without problems. All of this sounds like an advertisement, but I don’t get paid to say that xD Those technical specifications are one of the reasons why I was so interested to get one of these things for myself, it almost sounds too good to be true 😛 And it actually might be…

Some of you might already know how Thermal printing works, but let me explain it again so that we are all on the same page. Ink printers use one or multiple coloured inks to bring a certain image onto a paper. For that, you can use almost every paper but not every ink and when the cartridges are empty, they have to be refilled, often at a high price, which is one of the reasons why I stopped refilling my normal printer at one point. The thermal printers technically do not have this problem, because they work fully without ink, instead, they use a special paper with a thermal sensitive coding which is activated by the printer applying heat to it. This means that you can only use special kinds of paper, but you will never have to refill any cartridges. The biggest problem that comes with that though, is the fact that the image created on thermal paper will fade away after some time.

It’s hard to say how long the paper with the image printed onto it will hold up, because the paper used in these special printers like the one I review here, created for the purpose of using it at home, is a little different from the receipt paper you would get in a supermarket. It also highly depends on the way you store it. If it is in a cold and dark room, it will obviously last longer, than when it sits in direct sunlight. Different sources on the internet say different things, but the average time that a thermal printed paper will hold up in good storage condition seems to be between 5 and 7 years. Phomemo themselves state on their website that: “Just like all other thermal paper, our prints will eventually fade. Different paper has different storage time, we have 2 yrs,5 yrs,10 yrs,20 yrs, long term effective(over 20 yrs) for your reference.” Which is still quite the bummer, at least it was for me. But after thinking about it for a while, I came to the conclusion that you could still get a great value out of a product like this, depending on what project you plan on using it for.

Taken from Phomemos Website: https://phomemo.com

Let me tell you a bit about what you can actually do with a Phomemo thermal printer. To operate it you need to install a free app that comes itself equipped with some free-to-use templates for different tasks. Such as to-do lists, different frames or you could just type your own text into the app and it will be printed out, making it a great use for label printing. You could also use your own images such as pictures you made yourself, free to use stuff from the internet or your own art. I tried out all of these options and have to say it might not be the best photo printer, but I loved being able to just print something aesthetically fitting the theme of a project I did or making my own art into stickers.

For my review, I have used 3 different kinds of paper, all of which have been self-adhesive: plain white paper, transparent paper and silver glitter paper. On their website, it says that all of them are long time effective papers, said to hold up more than 20 years. I mostly choose them because they were part of a kit you were able to pursue on amazon and I did not want to put too much money into something, I had not really tested yet. But there are some more options to choose from like semi-transparent paper, normal coloured paper(which gives your black and white image a coloured background, sometimes even with a nice pattern) or paper which makes your print a different colour. That last paper is what I am most interested in since it’s as of now the only way I have seen printing something in colour, using the thermal printing method. Maybe I will use it in a future review 😉

When you are following my blog for a long time now, you must have seen that I like to design greetings cards myself and send them off to friends and family. I have used different methods for my designs, I have hand-drawn them using different pencils or watercolours, I tried fully digitally painting and later printing and I even used some scrapbooking techniques with different stickers and Washi tape. This scrapbooking technique is what I used the least, mostly because I needed to rebuy stickers for it over and over again, since using multiple stickers for one card, makes them deplete very fast. And honestly, that was always something which I dreaded, that I needed to know in advance which kind of stickers I wanted to use and also buy them in advance. With the thermal printer, I can come up with designs for stickers myself or search for already existing designs(free-to-use) fitting the mood I am in or the card I am designing. Which I love, but it would also mean, that nobody could really keep my cards, since the designs would fade away eventually. But honestly, nothing lasts forever, right? And maybe that makes the cards and the experience of receiving them even more unique and interesting 😉

Obviously, in this review, I was not able to try out all of the different options you have with this thermal printer, but I hope that I was able to at least give you a good overview of the product and you now have a better idea if it would be something for you or not. I can’t say that I am fully convinced about thermal printing being the best printing and I think it highly depends on the person and what they intend to use the prints for, but at least for me, it was worth buying and trying this printer out. I especially liked how the transparent stickers did not fully cover the scrapbooking background I made, but kinda added to it. If I keep using it on a regular base, I try to make a follow-up review maybe using different papers but also showing how much the designs I made in this review faded until then. If you have any questions or use a thermal printer yourself, tell me about it in the comments 😉

Greetings and good wishes
The Mad Hattress

Category: Art, Review | LEAVE A COMMENT
January 12

Sexism in Cartooning and Manga / Anime

My Art Journey

I was always fascinated by people who can draw and for a long time, I thought that would be a talent you have to be born with to actually create amazing art as we see in Comics, Manga, Cartoons, and Anime. But with Corona coming around and me saving some time on not having to get to University and back, for example, I wanted to use that newfound time to learn some new skills or maybe get some more hobbies. Drawing or better learning how to draw became an idea that manifested in my head and nagged me till the point where I finally just started to try it out.

My goal is to be able to tell my own stories with engaging characters, interesting backgrounds, and just expressive art in general. I want it to be something in between western comics and eastern manga, but of course, I have not found my definitive style yet 😉 To get better, I am currently watching a lot of tutorials on Youtube on how to draw eyes, mouths, noses, and faces in general, since I have to start somewhere xD And while watching these various tutorials from different artists there has been something coming up again and again which just does not sit right with me, thus I feel the need to talk about it over here: Gender and Sexism.

Just as a heads up: I don’t want to talk about sexist plotlines and character actions in Cartoons or Anime, since that’s a whole other can of worms I might be tackling another day xD What I want to talk about is solely limited to the way people draw and teach how to draw people in a comic or manga style. Let’s begin with the light stuff and end on the very problematic ones 😉

Female and Male attributes

The First thing I have noticed in these videos is that there is a distinct separation between how you draw a male and how you draw a female character. And I get that there has to be some kind of indication, as guidelines. So if an artist wants to make a character of his being read as female, he should be able to do that. But some of the things which are getting taught, sits a bit wrong to me.

Like the fact that the biggest two distinctions between male and female read characters are eyelashes and lips, female characters get them, male ones don’t. Because as real people we all know those features are not gendered, male read and female read people both have these features and they are not different from each other. There are other factors like certain genes which might give BIPOC larger lips, some might have naturally red lips other have the same colour as their skin tone. But again the factor here is not the gender, but the general genes. The same thing goes for the eyelashes, some people naturally have longer ones and others might have shorter, or thinner ones, making them appear less visible.

Obviously, we all know that and what you might think to yourself now is: those features on women are extraggered because they have been known to wear makeup more often, especially in the past. And I have to agree with you on that to some extent. I am sure that’s where this phenomenon of drawing originated from but we have to ask ourselves the question: Why do we still use or repeat that kind of style? Because in these modern times, all genders are allowed to wear makeup and if they would have been in the past, there would have been a lot more men doing it already too.

“I draw caricatures, not real people!”

Now I know many people would say at this point: These are not fully realistic characters anyways and you have to make a distinction between them. It’s just normal to see eyelashes or thick lips and expect them to belong to a woman, right? But the thing is: It’s only normal to us, because we see it reproduced a thousand times. It’s not set in stone in the way our brains are wired, it’s a man-made thing and it can be changed, by representing gender differently. For example, pirates are often represented wearing eyeliner, so many people are actually totally fine with male pirates wearing makeup because they have seen it so often that it has become normal to them. Meaning that if you would show them other kinds of makeup on men often enough, that too would become normal at one point.

Since I have thought about this topic for so long here are some features that I might suggest we all try to use for drawing different genders in the future, because they are actually often(but not always) based on the gender a person is born with. The overall shape of a woman’s body is more curved, they have bigger hips for example, and if they gain weight or muscles it will show in different areas than when you would draw a man. Men are more edged, less round so to speak, the same thing with weight and muscle gain showing differently in their anatomy. And of course, in non-realistic styles, you don’t have to show every muscle, but you can keep in mind that it will take the shape of a man’s body and the shape of a women body different and you can use that to convey your message as an artist. I am sure that’s only one of many ways, but it shows that change is not impossible.

The role of women as objects

This post already is a bit longer, but I still want to speak about the other thing I have noticed and it will be a lot quicker to talk about it because sadly it’s something all women are very familiar with. When listening to those mostly male teachers on YouTube talking about how to draw the female characters, they often used words like “seductive“, “sexy” and “lushes“. But when I want to learn how to draw a mouth, why do I have to learn how to draw it in a seductive way? Why do eyes have to be sexy? Just as a reminder: those were basic tutorials. I am not against art that is seductive and I am sure there are tips and tricks on how to create art like that too, which are very helpful. But I just don’t get why that would be something taught to a beginner.

Also, why are those words only used when talking about female features? Can’t men’s eyes have a sexy look to them too? I am a bisexual woman, I get the appeal of other women, but again that’s not something I am looking for when searching for tutorials. We can’t justify that by saying those teachers were male and they will be attracted to female read people, so that’s why they are using the language like that. Are they supposed to only teach other cis-male people learning art, so we are supposed to think that is the way how they communicate and that’s why “they understand” that the teachers “did not mean it like that”? Because YouTube is available to everyone. Drawing is available to everyone. Art is something that can be created by anyone. So make it for everyone and think about how 50% of the people potentially watching will feel if you can’t stop fantasizing about the lines to draw to create a female character.

Verdict

I am not sure if there is a real verdict to be made here, since I can’t review the way people teach something in a way I can review a book or a movie. But I think it helps to speak up when you notice things like that. Because if we don’t, things will never change. I don’t expect this post to go viral, or for those teachers to read it by accident, but if just some people start to notice similarities in videos they watch or lessons they listen to and they speak up, we already made progress 🙂 It was just very strange for me to see that something like this did not really change in so many years, that artists from over 50 years ago are still referenced and copied. Not that I don’t think we shouldn’t honour the old artists! I just think with new times, there will be new artists and new ways to draw too and that we maybe should focus more on those. Go with the time and explore new possibilities^^

Greetings and good wishes
The Mad Hattress

Category: Art | LEAVE A COMMENT
November 12

Artfulbox : Lino Printing

I am back again with another Artful Review! Like I mentioned last time I got multiple boxes, including some older ones when I made my subscription in September, that’s why I have so many to review^^ But for the people who don’t know what Artful is, it’s actually a quarterly subscription box from the UK meaning that you will get a new one every 3 months. Every new box will focus on a specific theme, exploring different art mediums and supplying you with different materials. Some of the old boxes’ themes include water coloring, calligraphy, and drawing with ink. This month’s box is themed after Lino printing, let’s take a look into it together!

The first thing we get in the box is a Lino cutter from Essdee with 10 extra cutting blades in different sizes, then a 112-page magazine with tutorials and interviews, 3 lino sheets (200mx150mmx3.2mm), two tubes of special block printing ink in red and black, a block with 25 sheets of premium heavyweight cartridge paper, a clear 200 micro A4 Acetate sheet and a 100mm ink roller. Compared to all the other Artful boxes I have reviewed up till now, this seems to be the one with the least amount of items in it. I can’t tell if that’s because these items are very pricey, meaning all boxes have the same value but some might be fuller and some less. Or maybe this was one of the first boxes and the budget wasn’t as high. I don’t necessarily feel like something is missing, since I actually don’t know anything about lino printing yet and all of the items seem to be of very high quality. After taking a look into the magazine in more detail, I might come back to this though.

Now that I have read through the magazine in more detail, I have actually already found something that bugs me a little bit. As I have just mentioned I was not sure if something was missing, but now I am. There are at least 3 things, which are talked about in the magazine, which could have easily been included. The first thing is tracing paper, which they say “you might have laying around in a drawer”, I personally never use that for anything, so now I have not. The second thing is sandpaper, which seems to be used for the ink sticking better to the lino or making textures, which they might think we get together with the third missing thing, being recommended by them in the magazine, an “anti-slip matt” from a hardware store. I do agree that all of these things could be already in a household of either an artist who has to trace for their work or maybe a handyman, who used sandpaper to make his wood creations smoother. But that’s not how a subscription box like that should work, I should be able to open it and begin working with what they supplied me with. The tracing paper and the sandpaper sound to be somewhat essential and also don’t cost much I assume it would have been no problem to put it in. The “anti-slip matt” seems to be more optional, but is still recommended, so why not include it?

What I really like about the magazine is that it feel way more beginner-friendly than some of the stuff in the previous boxes. In the beginning, they encourage you to use the 3 sheets they supplied in the box to start and experiment at first, not get into creating ASAP. That will be very hard for me to do, for the exact reason they state in the beginning pages “Not wasting resources” but the way they explained it, it’s not wasting, it’s kinda like creating your own color shart to know how the colors will look like on paper. That’s what you are doing, trying out the different nibs and what kinds of shapes and lines you can make with them and to make notes about it, maybe already planning a future masterpiece. When you are about to get started but have no idea what to carve yet, they have some templates with easy to recreate shapes to get on exploring the medium. Nothing as crazy as some of the tutorials seen in the ink boxes magainze(review coming soon ;)! They also tell you many important things about the shelf-live of Lino, the right methods to store and wash it, and how to carefully use the tools right. All of that information got me really hyped up to finally try out some lino printing myself, but first, let’s get on to carving 😉

Since I am trying out the box in October I was in the mood for some spooky designs and I had some pretty finished ideas in my head already. I wanted to make a Halloween stamp with a pumpkin and a potion bottle design(the ghost kinda appeared :P), but to get it from my head onto the Lino was a pretty challenging process. I used an H4 graphite pencil (which was not included) to draw my ideas directly onto the Lino, which did only partially work out. I did not want to put too much pressure on the pencil, because I did not want to leave marks in the lino, which I would not be able to get rid of again. But the graphite did not really stick to the surface that well, so I needed to go over and over it again. I then traced the lines of the design I wanted to have with the cutter and then made an outline in form of a rectangle. After finishing that task I tried to work my way inward, regretting small details like the pumpkin face xD But I did it in the end and was pretty proud for it being my first try, but also kinda nervous about if it would look the way I wanted it in the end, after applying the printing ink and transferring the designs onto paper…

The next step seemed fairly easy, but it was not xD After carving the pieces I cut them out with scissors to be able to print them onto the paper individually. I only used a small bit of the black printing ink, which can be compared to very thick acrylc paint, and apllied it to the right side of the roller, because my lino pieces were fairly small. I then went over the lino pieces multiple times, hoping for an even covarage, but intially also filing the small cravices which ment to stay ink-free. You can also see that in the first results, my small ghost is basically a black blob on the page. As for my potion bottle I actually regrett my choice of having the liqguid inside stay white and the glassy ouside be black. I can’t really say I planned it liked that, I only thought it about those two things being able to be distinguished from each other. That at least workes I guess 😛 My halloween stamp came ou the best I think, you can make out the shape of the pumkin and it’s face, even if it’s not perfect and the seem around the stamp is visible too, even though you could see that the bigger space made it even harder for me to get it covered evenly. But with practice, especially with the aplling ink part, I can see this workng very well for me and I can take all the information I got out of my errors to make my next lino pieces came out better 😉

This was actually the first Artful box which let me work with materials I have never used before. I did caligraphy as a hobby and I used water colors in school as I mentioned in the previous reviews but Lino printing was never something on my radar, I don’t think I would have picked it up to try out by myself. But it was actually quite fun, maybe because it was so diffrent! Carving out my designs instead of creating them step by step on the paper, was a very intresting experience. It was both easier and harder than I thought, if that makes sense 😛 For my very first try it did not feel as if anything was missing, though some tracing paper and maybe a marker of some kind which would stick better to the Lino would have been nice. But I guess the other things were not as needed as I thought when reading about them the magazin. I am still curious about the sandpaper and what could be done with it. But the Artfulbox is supposed to just ignite the curiousity in my and this one really succeded. Mabye I will buy sandpaper and try it out some 😉 And maybe you will too, I can highly recommend this box and the idea behind Artufl as a subscription as well^^

Greetings and good wishes
The Mad Hattress

Category: Art, Artful, Mystery Box, Subscription Box | LEAVE A COMMENT
September 8

My first poetry with Rupi Kaur (Milk and Honey Review)

Cover of the book: black backround with white text saying "Milk and honey, rupi kaur" and two realistically drawn bees. Text on the end is orange and says: "#1 New York Times Besteller".

Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
Published: 4th of November 2014
Length: 208 Pages
Genre: Collection of Poetry and Prose
Price: 11,49€ on Amazon

Review
Let me tell you the story of how I got to know the work of Rupi Kaur. I am actually not a big fan of poetry, at least not of the stuff we had to read and analyze at school. I guess not everyone liked to unpack a Sonett and its multiple layers of meaning, especially when it’s about something you are not interested in at all. So when a pen pal of mine, actually recommend Kaur’s work to me, in a totally different context and I got to read some of her poems, I was quite surprised that I was enjoying it. The friend suggested using her poems and illustration to get inspired for my own works of art, mostly illustrations too. So the intention was not even to get me into poetry, but maybe it kinda did?

But then, in an effort to find out more about this artist who got me interested in reading poems, I found out that not everyone was enjoying what she wrote, quite the contrary. Many people called her a wanna be-, Instagram- or tumblr poet, they were saying that her work seemed lazy and not quite thoughtful. People were pointing out that some of her work would be considered statements, might have even been Twitter posts, but not art. Which really got me thinking: what is art and who can decide on the definition? (There are famous people in Germany I know of whose whole art persona is based on sharing their own tweets on different platforms, it might not be poetry, so maybe to be the best example, but I would say it could be art, modern art so to speak.) That’s why I really wanted to write this review because I guess if I would not have been reading some of her poems before, hearing and reading all these negative things about Kaur’s might have been the point where I would have stopped researching. I might not even have bought the books I already put in my online shopping card. But glad I didn’t, I gave this artist a chance and I can’t say that I am regretting it.

I am not an expert on this field obviously and I don’t try to discredit the people who gave their very negative opinions on Kaur’s work, but I want to try and give another perspective on the topic. Because I think, what some people might actively or subconsciously have done was gatekeeping and I think in its essence, that was wrong. Comparing Kaur’s work with what I knew from schools, definitely showed some differences. Most of her poems are quite short and as I said, their meaning can be understood easily. The themes of her poetry surround around womanhood, abuse, family and relationships and you can say they feel like very meaningful quotes. The most popular one, which her first book is named after is “Milk and Honey”:

Image shows on of the poems from the book, black text on a white backround: "how is it so easy for you to be kind to people he asked Milk and honey dripped from my lips as i answered Cause people have not been kind to me - rupi kaur". On the right side of the page there is a illustrauion of a glas with a honey stick ontop and bees fling around it.

The messages of this poem seems to be: people who have been hurt, try not to hurt others because they don’t want anyone else to feel the pain, they felt. It’s said with a more visual language and emphasizes with a not quite fitting illustration, to which we get in a moment, but you get a general idea. There is no second or third layer behind it, which some people might consider lazy or consciously vague so that more people can relate to it. But what exactly would be the problem with that?
Kaurs work in her first book feels very much like a sort of theraphy session for herself and the reader, where you get lead through diffrent stages from “the hurting”, over “the loving”, to “the breaking” and in the end “the healing”. Writing down those maningful quote-like and longer poems, seemed to have helped her deal with certain things that might have happend to her. And it did help me feel understood somewhat too. Since I can’t believe Kaur only did that to become famous, I want to ask again: what exactly would be the problem with that? If she was helping herself and others with her words, is that not the purest form of art?

I said the illustration was not quite fitting, not because I wanted to critique her art style, but because I think a different imagine might have emphasized the message a little bit more. Her Illustration is general, seem to be what people like to complain about the second most though, also calling it lazy. I feel like that’s very subjective like the whole thing might be because I actually really like the art style Kaur used. Just because it’s not shaded or colored, because the ends of the lines don’t connect to each other all the time, it still has something very interesting to it, that I really enjoy. I actually even tried to recreate that, which is not as easy as it might seem. People also like to point out that it feels like the illustrations are only there to fill the pages, make the book seem fuller, they don’t really see it as part of the poem, which I find strange. I see them, the illustrations and the poems, as a connected piece of art. Like in this example:

Another Poem from the book, black text on a white backround: "the idea that we are so capable of love but still choose to be toxic - rupi kaur" with an illustration of a scorpion on the right end of the page.

It’s one of her shorter poems, which again can be understood very easily but with the scorpion she choose to put on that specific page, it might tell a bigger different story. I see it as a nod to the fable of the scorpion and the frog, which goes something like this: A scorpion asks a frog if he can ride on his back to get from one side of the river to the other side. The frog asks “Why should I risk getting stung by you?” to which the scorpion answers “Why should I sting you on the river, if it would mean that we both drown?”. The frog sees the logic in that and decides to help the scorpion, but halfway over the river, the scorpion goes against his word and stings the frog. With his last dying breath, the frog asks the scorpion why he did that and doomed them both, and the scorpion answers “It’s just my nature”. So both the poem and the story play with the idea of people making bad decisions, hurting themselves and others in the process. But Kaur’s poems seem to condemn the actions more, going against the idea of “It’s just my nature” whereas the fable kinda leaves that more open to interpretation. With that in mind, I don’t think Kaur just put random art on the page to fill up her book, she did it because it was part of the art she wanted to create and maybe the message she wanted to sent.

Final Thoughts
So, all in all, I would say art is a very subjective thing, so don’t let other people tell you that something you enjoy is bad and always try to make up your own mind. From what I understand, Rupi Kaur’s work might be considered Level 1 poetry: fun to read, easy to understand, and aesthetically pleasing. It might not be comparable to Level 5 or Level 10 poerty, but that does not mean it’s not good or not poetry at all. So this might be a good book to get you started on poems in general, especially if you like the topics mentioned. It might get you interested in this form of art and that’s never wrong.

Greetings and good wishes
The Mad Hattress

Category: Art, Book Review, Review | LEAVE A COMMENT
August 13

Exhibition “Broken” by Reiinku

Hello, people of Wonderland! Recently I took part in a very special exhibition and I wanted to tell you about it 🙂 The exhibition took place in an art studio called Resdient Creative, where you can get tattooed but also chill and just be surrounded by creativity and maybe be creative yourself. It was made by Daria Reiin aka Reiinku and thoughtfully set up in a cellar under the studio. The exhibition is up until the end of the month and I would highly recommend you going there if you would happen to be in Hamburg, Germany^^ But keep in mind that you have to make an appointment first, stay safe and healthy!

Official poster of the exhibition with a close up of the mai piece: a girl and her oni mask falling. Text says: 31 July. 31 August 2021, Broken(in japanse and english)" on the left side: "Exhibition by Reeinku" on the right: "of masks and inner demons".

The room you see in the photo was actually hidden behind a curtain and filled up with smoke, so the lighting would really come to play. It was really cool to see the art being framed by the room, which kinda looked like a piece of art itself with the shibari-styled ropes and other decorations. You could really say going in there was an experience, it was not only about viewing the art itself but feeling the eeriness and the exhibition as a whole. It was really interesting and I can’t say that I have experienced anything like that ever before. Of course, it’s never the same in the pictures, it’s something to really be felt in real-time.

Picture shows a cella with white walls and many ropes in shibari style tying everything together. At the end of the room there is a jean jacket with the main art piece on it, with two ringlights shining at it. Infront of it are diffrent other art pieces haning.

The concept behind the exhibition referring to its name “broken” was the social concept of wearing masks. Maybe to adjust to a certain environment or to hide something, we don’t want others to see, many people wear a kind of mask on a daily basis. And some people might be wearing their masks for so long, that they can’t even imagine life without them anymore. So what would happen if some of those masks begin to crack, break, and shatter, revealing what has been sheltered underneath. And what would we see then? Would it be the same person that put the mask on in the first place or would they have been changed?

Some of these questions might get answered, through the paintings we see hanging in the room. They are of two different people. One wearing a mask to look like a pretty girl, maybe the white represents being pure. But when it crumbles, the mask reveals that there is something dark underneath, something dangerous also being represented by the flower wilting away. On the other side, we have a person wearing a mask to look angry, hideous even, but the cracks reveal a beautiful and loving face, emphasized by the flower in its full glory. So you could see it that way: Some people try to look pretty, but they are ugly on the inside, whether as people who seem angry on the outside, might be loving in reality.

A Collage of the other art pieces, on the left side: the first picture show hald of a face wearing an oni demon marsk with shar theeth and horns, the secound one show a flower blooming, the third one shows the other half of the face with the same mask, but crombeling around the eye, reavealing a much nicer face behind the mask. On the right side: there is hald of a face looking lighe a beautiful face but with a big crack, the secound picture is a flower wilting away and the thirs one is the other half of the face again crumbeling around the eyes reavailng a dark, dangerous looking monster underneeth.

The main piece of the exhibition was a jean jacket, entangled in ropes with the drawing of a girl losing her mask entirely. I especially like how the jacket itself is held up, it looks very dynamic, almost as if you could imagine the girl wearing the jacket while being shocked about the loss of her mask and possibly a big part of her identity. The mask is of a japanese demon called Oni being portrait with his horns, yellow glowing eyes, and sharp teeth. The girl behind the mask wears a little make-up, she almost looks innocent in comparison. But she too has horns, so maybe she did not lose everything with the broken mask. Maybe a part of her already identifies with the demon she wore. I like to interpret that as a girl who is shy and maybe scared but wearing a mask of confidence to protect herself. So when the mask falls down, some of this confidence still remains, meaning that she is now able to protect herself without the mask too or it could mean the demon is still inside her, even if it seems like she might have lost it.

A photo of the main piece, a jean jacket with flowers on the arms and a innocent looking girl on the back, a mask he wore broke in half and is falling down. The mask is of a japanese demon called oni and it has horns, same as the girl has.

All in all, it was a very special and intriguing experience, I am very happy to have taken part in it! What was especially interesting and might not be possible in every exhibition, is that the artist herself led us through and talked with us about her intentions for every piece. I might not have done justice writing about it here and now, but like I said in the beginning: if you get the chance to experience it yourself, do it 😉 If there are any other exhibitions done by Reiinku, I will be definitely sure to check them out! And if you want to check the amazing artist behind this exhibition out, you can do so here:

Reiinku’s Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/reiinku/?hl=de
Reiinku’s website: https://reiinku.com/

Greetings and good wishes
The Mad Hattress

Category: Art, Personal Life | LEAVE A COMMENT