Mutekikon

Hi, and thank you for touching down in my shop. I am an artist-illustrator-writer working in Farmington Connecticut.

BACKGROUND: I have been drawing and painting for thirty-five years, and my Etsy shop is an art print business. From the start, I have sought to design a process that would attractively and inexpensively offer prints of my original paintings framed and ready-to-hang.

PROCESS: My item descriptions set forth the essence of my process. To elaborate a bit more, I print on demand, and I carry an inventory of framing in the dimensions I need. I cut my own plexiglass and mounting boards to fill each individual order. All work, every step, is done by myself. I am a one-person operation. Still, I commit to shipment within one to two business days of order receipt.

MY INK GRINDING PROCESS: Much of my work at this time of my life is in monochrome and, for this I grind my own black ink from Chinese ink sticks, fresh at each sitting. The above photo loop illustrates the process. Working the ink stick into the grinding stone and distilled water, has a soothing effect and puts me into a peaceful mindset. I also like the fact that the ink sticks are made in China, following age-old processes, before finally shipping by way of Bejing. My ink is rich and vibrant and, when introduced onto wet watercolor paper in a dry studio, explodes into life. The quality of my print process is such that the prints are every bit as luminous and vibrant as my original paintings.

CREATING A COMPOSITION: Each of my artworks is an original composition. It starts with a perception or an idea of something that excites me. It might be a dance, or an outdoor scene, or something imagined. Whatever—it then leads to selecting and re-composing elements from life to dramatize a theme around that first perception or idea, a theme that is personally important to me. For instance, in an Argentine Tango composition, that theme invariably is some aspect of the male-female relationship.

MY ILLUSTRATION WORK: The “Mutekikon” section of my shop contains illustrations that I created in 2010 to illustrate my picture storybook by that title. The name, “Mutekikon,” “Invincible Spirit,” is my invention. It is a union of the Japanese word for invincible—“muteki”—and the word for spirit—“kon.” Each of my Mutekikon illustrations is available as a framed print. In addition, the picture storybook, now on DVD, is available on Etsy as a separate item. It contains the eighteen original artworks animated by native style flute music, voice narration, dynamic text, camera effects, and sound effects.

Enjoy your stay at Mutekikon and I look forward to meeting you. Kevin Osborne