Today In The Mailbox: Katsuya Terada & Hiroshi Homura mini books

So, today, just right before snow started to fall again; I received a package from Japan with a couple of books.

The books are Shasho and Kacho, two small, hardcover, publications featuring text, maybe poetry, probably short stories, by Hiroshi Homura and art by Katsuya Terada.

The books are from 2003 and 2006.

 

The one with the grey cover is Shasho, from 2003 and features Terada's art depicting what I think are horror or creepy stories, some of his illustrations show a Frankenstein monster and a lady with a vampire bat flying above her. There's also a really cool spread with a circus crew, but I couldn't scan it.

The last tale features a little kid and maybe the best illustrations in the book.

Don't you love these? I absolutely do.

In both books Terada's art is rough enough to remind his Rakugaking book.

Kacho instead presents stories about a small robot, a kid and some weirder stuff about people eating.

There's also a part with these character drawings.

 

And, the best ones of the lot, a series of his Moebius-y drawings, already used as covers for the Japanese magazine relax.

 

These strangely armored women's portraits are among my favorite Terada's works, I used to be very inspired by these when I first saw them on internet years ago.

I like their simplicity and how they manage to be rich with details and atmosphere with a really simple series of lines.

So, I'm glad I finally got these books, but I think they are fan material for Terada's addicts like me; I wish that some new book like Rakugaking or Zenbu pops out soon.

Start Of Year

Hey, hope 2011 has begun in a great way.
I spent the last days shaking off all of the holidays big meals and celebrations; now I'm ready to start!

I just got a couple of books' shipments, one from Japan and one from Amazon.
The Japanese one is a bunch of artbooks: Redline Illustrations, which I haven't looked much yet because I want to see the movie first as soon as a translation pops out, then Shining Force III Artbook with LOTS of cool designs and ideas for characters, Elemental Gearbolt World Guidance it's a visual collection from a weird gunpoint game for PSX, set in a cyber fantasy world, the majority of the design is done by an interesting artist called Hitoshi Yoneda.

The last artbook is a collection of design from Front Mission's first episode, characters by Yoshitaka Amano and mechas by Kow Yokoyama (I bought it especially for Yokoyama's mech buildups).
There were some doujinshis too in the box, three of them by Atsuji Yamamoto, one of my favorite manga artists, a couple from his Arnis series and one with miscellaneous short comics and two volumes of the collective doujinshi Thinking Battalion with really great "hey look how early 90's Japanese fantasy we look like" characters.

The box from Amazon had  three novels inside: Breakfast Of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut, Empire Of The Sun by J.G. Ballard and Thomas Pynchon's V.
I recently read some Vonnegut's novels and fell in love with them, so I'm curious to read more, I love his blend of science fiction, social criticism and anti-war themes; but I'll start off reading Ballard's Empire Of The Sun because I looked for it for quite some time and I'm impatient.
I'll keep Pynchon at the end; I'm a bit stressed right now and his novels require a huge load of attention.

Well, I guess that's all for now, I made a lot of sketches for places and new drawings, but since I'm going to be busy for the next days for work matters I guess there won't be any progress with the illustrations, as soon as I got something worth showing from ZZZ I'll post here for sure.

Talk soon, ciao!