Wallpaper* Graduate Directory

Wallpaper* magazine's 2010 Graduate Directory's been published on their website and I got listed!

So nice to be written about along with other amazing designers/artists. My dear course mates Ally Haigh, Richard Carey and Joe Wood also made it there. Happy :)

Please have a look from here!

I wish i had a computer with a bigger screen!

Unfortunately I had to cut the image of my work there at the bottom. I know I know it's nothing but still very very slightly heartbreaking to see my work cut like this. How naive am I...??

Paisley

Another new piece just completed a couple of days ago! It always feels nice to let my dear child go into public after a long long private time together!

I'm calling it Paisley...I know it's not quite what paisley looks like, but it's my interpretation of paisley thank you.

My work is normally black and white. I like the aesthetic of it and am naturally more attracted to black and white image. But I thought, wait, maybe I'm restricting myself only to black and white and not "expanding my horizon" enough! Huh huh such an art student I still am even though I'm officially a "graduate" now. It's done with colour pencils and pens on paper and it was nice to get back into using pens again after so long time of befriending only with pencils. Oh my Pilot Hi-Tec-C 0.3 was as nice to me as a year ago!

From The Woods

This is the new piece I've just finished and successfully scanned this afternoon!

It's called 'From The Woods'. I had this phrase in the poem The Gyres by Yeats in my mind while working on this piece which goes

Out of cavern comes a voice,

And all it knows is that one word 'Rejoice!'

I think the women are looking into the cavern. They want to embrace the voice but are also skeptical to the voice from the outside world. It's a bit like, they never thought about something like 'rejoice' in their lives because for them life's all about getting on with things they've got to do. Now all of a sudden this concept of rejoice gashed into their lives and they're a bit like, what are you talking about...?

It's on my main website now too. I did have a very productive day! (Have you noticed it's the second post of the day!!)

Stereohype Badges Arrival!!

Today I received the badges I designed for Stereohype in the post!

So nice seeing my work made into a product. Yes they are just badges and I might be making too much fuss about it but you know. It's something special for a just-starting-up-freshly-out-of-University-freelance-illustrator such as myself! Of course I took out my new favourite gadget of the world Olympus Pen (thanks to my dear mother I would never ever be able to afford it otherwise) and took some photos.

I went to a print shop this morning to scan my new piece but their large format scanner was broken..... such a shame. I was going to dedicate my morning to updating my website with some newly drawn ladies of the woods but well that has to wait until this afternoon...

But let this be a lesson. I'm going to ring the print shop before I leave this time to make sure the scanner is fixed! Ha! Humans are the animals that can learn from mistakes!

Badges for Stereohype

A set of 3 badges I designed this summer is now on sale from graphic art and fashion boutique : Stereohype.

£4 for all 3 of them or £1.50 for 1. What a bargain!!!

Other than that, I've been working on a new piece of pencil drawing. It is very loosely based on one phrase in The Gyres by Yeats which goes,

What matter?

Out of cavern comes a voice,

And all it knows is that one word, 'Rejoice!'

I'm starting to draw the frame now which is the final part of the illustration! This piece is my personal work but it's making me re-realise how much I love drawing. Oh I do love drawing. Oh I do I do!

it's nice that is so nice like that!

it's nice that wrote about me today thanks to lovely Alex!

it's nice that are at Portobello Dock as part of ‘The Dock’ exhibition this week. You can buy it's nice that 2nd publication there like I did yesterday! (Possibly the best £10 spent this year too!) You should definitely pay a visit there... the whole thing is amazing. It's massive and has so much space with lots of fantastic exhibits.

Yes yes I went to London yesterday and saw lots of inspiring stuff including the Dock exhibition. The day made me want to create more and more! I'm working frantically on a new pencil drawing piece on women of the woodland!!

Girrrrrrrrrls...

I came across this ffffound user. She seems to be an illustrator originally from South Korea currently based in NY. I'm an illustrator originally from Japan currently based in the UK. Hmmmmmmm just switch and stitch here and there and me and her could be swapped around the globe! I hope she won't find out, or if she does, won't mind my little blurb hehe.

The photos she finds are amazing.... I can't stop looking at photo after photo of beautiful girls... Very inspiring indeed.

OUR EXHIBITION - The Menagerie Exhibition

I'm taking part in The Menagerie Exhibition at Ropetackle in Shoreham opening this Wednesday!

It's a group exhibition of

* Me (Illustrator / Pencil Drawings)

*Emily Maude (Illustrator / Screen Prints and Pen Drawings)

*Ellie Wood (Illustrator / Collage)

*Katie Munro (Illustrator / Pencil Drawings)

*Sarah Latham (Photographer)

The opening night is on the 9th of September (yes this Wednesday!!) from 7pm.

The exhibition is open until the beginning of October (yes for AN ENTIRE MONTH!!).

Ropetackle Centre / Little High Street, Shoreham by Sea, West Sussex, BN43 5EG Tel: 01273 464440

It's 10 mins walk from the station towards the seafront. I have never been to Shoreham before but now I have and it's actually a really nice place especially on a nice sunny day. You can see multi-coloured boat houses floating on the ocean with people really living in them! Amazing....I do worry if it's ok when it's storming though. But I guess there are people living there so it should be no problem? Hmmmmmm......

Ok I'm off to the cinema the second time today (I went to see a special screening of Pierre le fou this morning) to see Broken Embraces! Hoooooooo!!!

Haruki Murakami's speech

I've just found Haruki Murakami's speech at Jerusalem Prize. Hmmmmm interesting.....

Music, books and films.

Would I ever stop buying things?

.......Maybe not. Maybe never...........

*Beneath The Surface Vol4 - A Bella Union Sampler

Especially Black Ice by Ohbijou (such a beautiful website!) and Keep you eyes on the road by Paul Marshall are so so beautiful that I find myself listening to them again and again....

"staring at your innocent skin wondering how I fucked this up but I surely did"

.... Mr Paul Marshall, could you be my best friend please??

*South of the Border, West of the Sun , Haruki Murakami

Another Murakami book.... addition to my Murakami collection...

*The Flaming Green Tree Trilogy, Kenzaburo Oe

I've just started reading this and already liking it. This is the second book I read by this author (the first was The Changelling which was also good). I normally don't like award-winning types of writings but am finding his work really personal and fascinating... makes me want to visit Shikoku next time I go back to Japan....hmmmm maybe not. Maybe it's better to leave it in my imagination...hmmmm...

*Confession, Ko Machida

This is the most entertaining book out of all my recent purchases but my least favourite too. Maybe because I like to live in metaphors and this is a bit too straight-forward directly into your face... maybe I like "reading between lines" too much. Maybe a few too many maybes when I talk about my love of things haha. But when I like something, I can't even explain why I like it sometimes... just like everyone else I hope?

*Innocence directed by Lucile Hadzihalilovic

Beautiful film. Girls of that age are so sharp and fragile...

I think the director is the wife of Gasper Noe. I'm sorry if I'm wrong. His earlier films such as canon and carne are also amazing... Irreversible is a bit too strong for me. I went to see it by myself and cried in a cinema in the middle of the film. How naive.

*A box set of 3 films by Leos Carax, which doesn't include my favourite Les amants du Pont-Nuef!! eeeeee!!! But still, I like his other films too.

Sigh..... I will go bankrupt soon.....I really shouldn't have gone to Fopp. London trapppppppppp......

Amelia's magazine

God. I haven't updated my blog for a month! This is badddddd........ I've been busy with Graduation etc etc for a month. Yes it's an excuse, isn't it? Well well well...

I got interviewed by Amelia's magazine the other day (thanks to lovely Alice) and it's online now!

http://www.ameliasmagazine.com/amelias_blog/2009/08/yuko_michishita_a_new_traditio.php

See? I wasn't just doing nothing...!!!

Love from nice and sunny Brighton. Big boo to all those leaving Brighton too!!

Post Degree Show Personal Reward

First of all, big thanks to those who came to our London show!

Everything went well in the end and we had a big fun time.

Again, I was too busy having fun and looking after the bar (aka apologising to all the people there that we only have water or orange juice with a sad look on my face... sorry everyone who came. We really didn't think the drinks would go that quickly..), I forgot to take photos...

Some lovely people said nice things about my work and also we got blogged about quite a bit which makes me happy.

Anyway, I thought it should be time to give myself a reward.

Books books books!!!

Classic reward to myself. My family (especially my dear mummy) was very strict about everything from not leaving food on the plate served to you to never wear clothes with cute characters embroidered but was so generous about books purchases that I never considered the prospect of not buying books I wanted until I was about 20, which is probably a bit too late.

Well it's a reward to myself! so I went on amazon.co.jp and spent about proper 3 hours browsing on and on and on...

Eventually I bought 7 Japanese books I read when I was little and am getting all of them sent here to Brighton! Hooray to the world of international shipping!

This is the first one arrived about a week ago. One of my favourite books of my childhood, "Never Ending Story".

I must have read it when I was about 10 because I remember the thickness of the book was quite challenging when I first read it. But I conquered it within a week and really REALLY loved it. This is exactly the same version (the cover and illustration inside) as the one I read as well which makes things sooooo special. I remember being careful not to damage the beautiful red cover!

I finished reading it last week and it was as good as I remembered, which is very, very good. I'm kind of thankful that I had to go to London every day for a week for the Degree Show preparation so that I could read it every day on the train even though I was very busy.

By the way I've got a mixed feeling about the film Never Ending Story... As a film, it's not bad. But the thing is that I read the book first and the book was soooo good that I was expecting so much from the film. But! the film didn't live up to my expectations... The film is like a badly Photoshopped version of the book even though I have to admit that I had a massive crush on Atreyu. (Also I thought Moon Child was so pretty.)

I've just received another one of the books today. I've just started reading it and again, it's as good as I remembered so far. It's quite a dark story about British origined "Little People" (they're like fairies about the size of a thumb.) living in War-time Japan and a Japanese family who's looking after them. The father of the family gets imprisoned for being anti-war and the older brother of the family becoming militaristic.. wow I'm realising how dark and deep this story is. It's meant to be a children's book though!

I'll probably write about it sometime soon!

Degree Show

I went up to London to see Central Saint Martins MA/Graphic Design, Illustration, Digital Media show and also CSM BA Graphic Design show. I took so many photos of the work I liked and also took their business cards too. I was looking through them all yesterday only to find out that there were soooo many people in these shows that I didn't remember which student did which work...etc. How embarrassing.

Here are some of the photos I took. If you happen to find your own work here and are upset about me putting the photos without your permission, please do let me know! But just to let you know, your work is up here because your work is amazing!! (so please don't get upset too much ;)

By the way Brighton Uni Graphic Design/Illustration are having a London show!

The schedule is as follows.

2nd/July : Private View from 6pm til late

3rd/July : Open from 10am - 8pm

4th/July : Open from 10am - 8pm

5th/July : Open from 10am - 8pm

6th/July : Open from 10am - 8pm

It is at Rag Factory off Brick Lane. It's near Truman's Brewery where Free Range is.

There's going to be workshop by

3rd/July : Alex Bec and Will Hadson of AlexBec / It's nice that

6th/July : Jim Stoten

and also Peggy Sue are playing in the evening of the 6th (final night).

Wooooo yesss I know it sounds worth a visit, doesn't it?

Wooooo if you don't come, trust me you're missing out a big time!!

Creative Review

Faceless Women Trilogy 1: Harvest is on Creative Review Magazine website now!

http://www.creativereview.co.uk/feed/june-2009/08/faceless-women-trilogy-1-harvest

Also University of Brighton BA Graphic Design/Illustration 09 Graduates website is up, too. Lots of nice work promised to be found there!

http://gdi09.co.uk/

The private view

I was at the Brighton Uni Degree Show private view last night. It went superbly well and I got to talk to very nice people who could possibly give me some commissions (always welcome, ALWAYS!) and lots of mums and dads of my dear friends. It was a bit weird and sensational seeing the parents of my fellow students I've known for almost 3 years for the first time though. Seriously, some of the parents/siblings looked like different gendered/aged versions of them. (Yes I'm talking about you, Josh!) I repeated "wow they're like crones..." quite a lot in my head, but of course I had enough self-control and politeness not to say it in front of them even though I'm one of those people who can't hide what they're thinking. Apparently my face shows a lot about what I'm thinking according to my dear friends. So well done me.

Unfortunately I was too busy running around having a good time and forgot to take photos... But I'm thinking of asking people if they've got any photos from last night and if they do, I'll post them here soon. Fingers crossed.

Thanks to all those who came to the private view. Hope you had a fun time!

*****Brighton Uni Degree Show*****

is finally going to start on the Friday, 5th of June (private view starts in the evening open only to ticket holders) but is going to be open to public from the Sat, 6th of June until Thur, 11th of June.

It's going to be open from 10am to 8pm, with an exception of the final day the 11th, opening at 10am closing at 4pm.

Time to head off to Brighton everyone! The weather's nice here and you can lay on the beach too...

www.yukomich.co.uk

My main website is finally updated after 6 month of not touching it. Well I wasn't being lazy! I was very much involved in pencils and paper so I forgot about the digital side of things. But now after 6 months and a couple of sleepless nights, it's all new! I mean, not all the images but the design and things. With some new work too. It looks nice. Big time. haha

Final of the trilogy!

Today I finally had my final piece of the 'faceless women trilogy' framed. The piece is called 'Harvest' (above). It's about the Miao Women (or the Hmong Women, apparently, Miao is a term not favoured by the Miao people. They prefer to be called the Hmong, according to wikipedia. So I'm going to officially refer to them as 'the Hmong people' from now on. But you know, I just love the sound of 'Miao'. I think it sounds otherworldly. I love it. So I'm going to call them 'the Hmong people', but my reference image file on my laptop is still named 'Miao'. It's not publicly displayed so I think I'd just get away with it keeping it to myself!) harvesting rice together.

The women don't have eyes because I didn't want to give them individuality or character unique to themselves. Each woman is one part of the whole, but also the whole represents each woman.

It's very difficult to explain. But it's like, the women are the ohmu and the whole image is the sea of corruption! which  I know to most people of the world including my tutors haven't got a clue what I'm going on about but those of you who are familiar with Hayao Miyazaki of the studio Ghibli's masterpiece, 'Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind'  (not the film, the comic books!), my gibberish all makes sense!  So, I'd recommend anyone who comes across my life to read Nausicca. Available at Dave's comics on Sydney Street if you happen to live in Brighton. If not, amazon is always only one click away.

Anyway, I'm very satisfied with how the work looks with the frame and everything! 

 

Llama Groom

I've had an extremely busy day today running around trying to scan my illustration (I know it doesn't sound like much of a mission, but if the piece you're trying to scan is A1 sized, trust me things would get much more complicated!) and to frame it. Anything digital and me are not very good friends so some things went a bit wrong as always but in the end I've achieved what I planned, which means yes yes I'm picking up the new work "Llama Groom" nicely framed from the framer tomorrow!

The one at the top is the work "Llama Groom". It's the same size as "Baby Weaving" (SRA1 that is) and I'm going to show it in the degree show along with "Baby Weaving" and another piece which I'm still working on called "Harvest". The two eggs in the middle are the eggs of the llamas of the two maidens at the top. They're playing music for their unborn babies. All the other ladies are mothers of the llamas they're carrying on their backs helping the two maidens entering their motherhood. 

And also I made the other pattern based illustration today. Yes I'm a prim and proper workaholic! haha.

Baby Weaving

I did a photoshoot this morning of one of my A1 sized (well technically speaking it's slightly bigger than A1 at 640 x 900 mm. But you know I'm not an anal graphic designer!) pencil drawings called 'Baby Weaving'. The photoshoot went superbly well with the help of an amazingly practical and incredibly nice photography technician.

It was very VERY satisfying to see the piece properly framed and photographed since it took me about staggering 5 weeks of house-worming (which is a term for my state of being when I'm drawing drawing drawing and cannot possibly think about anything else and don't leave my flat unless absolutely necessary such as lack of food on a life-threatening level) to create this piece.  

I'm planning of showing it in my degree show along with other A1 pieces of illustration I have created and am still working on so those of you who are at least ever so slightly curious to see the details of the drawing , please do come to University of Brighton Illustration/Graphic Design Degree Show!

Hello!

Welcome to my new blog. Hopefully I'll be posting my new work quite regularly here from now on! At the moment I'm working on another (slightly bigger than) A1 piece of pencil drawing based on Miao maidens growing rice with some magical touch. (if you're slightly interested in minority races and indigenous tribes like I am, find out about the Miao people here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miao_people

Yes they are so beautiful.. I've got about 500 photos of them in my precious reference images folder and am very proud of it!) The piece is still not completed so I cannot show it here yet, but it will be up very soon (again hopefully!) so keep your eye on this space!