Illustration project - "Kawaii (かわいい) Culture"

These illustrations are about "Kawaii Culture". Kawaii mean cuteness, this is a Japanese culture emerged in the 1970s as part of a new style of writing. Some people would write in big, round characters and they added little pictures to their writing, such as hearts, stars, smiley faces, and English letters.

During 1980s, this cute new writing was adopted by magazines and comics and was put onto packaging and advertising. Later, cute handwriting became associated with acting childish and using infantile slang words. Because of this growing trend, companies, such as Sanrio, came out with cartoon characters like Hello Kitty. Hello Kitty was an immediate success and the obsession with cute continued to progress in other areas as well.

In the 1980s kawaii gained enormous popularity, dominating Japanese pop culture throughout the decade. Many young people felt that adulthood was too harsh and strict, requiring too much responsibility; they viewed it as a loss of freedom.

My concept about these artworks is "If the Kawaii Culture influence in the city which I live at, how it would be looked like?"

The materials I used for are acrylic painted on jean. This is the first time I draw picture on jean, very special experiment.

p/s: the information about "kawaii culture" copy from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kawaii, you could find more information about "kawaii culture" at here too.