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Artist: Deep Hawaii Art
Title: Tina the Tako
Medium: Embellished with Prismacolors on washi paper
Size: 20" x 30" framed
Lāna`i artist Kristin Belew painstakingly embellished this life-size reproduction of her Gyotaku print with Prismacolors.
Gyotaku is a traditional Japanese style of fish printing where each original piece of art is taken right from the fish. Kristin applies acrylic paint to the actual octopus then presses rice paper onto the specimen to receive the paint. She then adds in details!
Fun facts from Kristin:
In Hawaii, Octopus are referred to by their Japanese name which is Tako. The Hawaiian word for octopus is He’e and the species most commonly harvested is the Day octopus (Octopus cyanea.) Although octopus is a very popular and sustainable food source (listed as “a good alternative” under Monterey Bay Seafood Watch Program) for many people living in Hawaii, it is one I refuse to harvest for myself. I absolutely love these creatures and cannot bring myself to kill one, but I am not opposed to others doing so for sustenance purposes. Thus, this tako was “borrowed” to create this print. The original print was done with white acrylic paint and using a black kozo rice paper. It was quite a challenge for me to invert my thinking to use “whites” for shadows and darker portions. Some quick cool facts on octopus: They can change their color, texture and pattern in 3/10 of a second and they can open childproof pill bottles. Octopus can have as many as 240 suckers on each tentacle and each sucker can be controlled independently. One large sucker can hold as much as 35 pounds!
Category: Deep Hawaii Art
