Lion Dance! (Inspired by Yayoi Kusama)

Lion Dance on poles, inspired by Yayoi Kusama.

For this project, I have chosen Malaysian lion dance on poles as my subject matter to represent one of the Malaysian cultural heritage.

To make things interesting, the colour scheme and the patterns found from my artworks are mostly inspired by a Japanese pop art artist, Yayoi Kusama's artworks.

Yayoi Kusama has distinctive artistic sense, by using bold, vivid and vibrant colour schemes in her artworks. Then, her iconic styles include the vast usage of polka dots, which was also included in my artworks. I used multi panel technique as it is a pop art technique, since these artworks were inspired by a pop art artist.

The lions in my artworks were based on the southern lion which was originated from China, as this type of lion dance is more common in Malaysia rather than the Northern lion.

Some of you might ask, if it was originated from China, then why am I saying that these artworks fit the topic of Malaysian cultural heritage? The keyword for the answer is POLES. Malaysian lion dance on poles was listed as national cultural heritage of Malaysia in 2007 as the performance of lion dance on poles were invented by the Malaysians, inspired by a kung fu style named Mei Hua Quan (梅花拳). Not only the Malaysians invented this form of performance, they also developed it well by organising international championship (for exampe, the Genting World Lion Dance Championship) and producing lion head mask instead of importing it from overseas.

So, what is lion dance? Why Yayoi Kusama?

Lion dance is a traditional performance among the Chinese around the world that normally appears on Chinese new year and opening ceremonies. The two performers under a single lion costume will mimic a lion's behavior and people believes that it can chase evil spirits away while bringing luck and prosperity. This performance are highly entertaining when it goes with the Chinese drums, gongs, and cymbals. Sometimes, there is even a big head buddha as a part of the performance for crowd control purpose. The whole performance, whether it includes the poles or not, are constantly spreading love, passion, and joyfulness to the audiences. Therefore, Yayoi Kusama's poppy, joyful color scheme and dots patterns fits the performance perfectly. By using Yayoi Kusama's significant styles, the lions in my artworks look totally different from the traditional lions in real life.

As shown above, the artworks have 2 versions, physical artworks and digital artworks. I did the physical artworks first and use Adobe Illustrator to trace out, color, and amend the details to produce a neater digital artworks. Below are the progress of my artworks.

Progress:

Original sketch, colored it by poster color.

Amended idea, using color pencils to experiment on the colors. From this point onwards, I have decided to use the multi panel technique, where I split the full images into two artworks.

The photos below are the physical artworks that I've done:

After I did my physical artworks, I traced the lion by using the pen tool of Adobe Illustrator. Notice that all the dots (excluding the eyeball) are irregular as I did not use the eclipse tool. I believe that these irregular dots are more lively and joyful compared to cold, regular perfect dots. Then, I copied the lion that I traced and reflect 90° vertically to the artboard beside.

Then, it goes the same for the poles. The big head buddha was also added. The photos below show my coloring progress of my digital artworks:

Mockups:

This is what it looks like if it is printed.

Mockup template in PSD format taken from Tech & ALL:

https://techandall.com/wooden-art-frame-v-2/

T-shirt mockup. Mockup template in PSD format taken from hyperpix:

https://hyperpix.net/mockups/apparel/young-woman-t-shirt-mockup/

Black jacket with white patterns same as the background pattern of my artworks, inspired by Yayoi Kusama's art style.

Mockup template in PSD format taken from Freepik:

<a href="https://www.freepik.com/free-psd/men39s-jacket-mockup-front-view-3d-illustration_25650913.htm#query=mockup%20jacket&position=3&from_view=search&track=sph">Image by Kerfin7</a> on Freepik

Phone case with black and white background patterns, inspired by Yayoi Kusama's art style.

Lion Dance! (Inspired by Yayoi Kusama)

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Lion Dance! (Inspired by Yayoi Kusama)

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