Ayami Kojima is a Japanese artist who commonly works on character design for videogames, most notably the Castlevania series.
Ayami Kojima - Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
She uses mixed traditional media to create these stunning pieces with lots of texture and personality. Her backgrounds really pop as she uses moulding paste and thick layers of acrylic that physically stand out and catch the light. I love the texture used on the wings using either watercolour or inks, giving this rough pattern.
I wanted to recreate one of her pieces and I decided on this one. I have a different range of mixed media to use, some of which matches the original. The key aspects I wanted to replicate the textural background, the wings, and the hair. For the backgrounds I ended up using ink with oil pastels to add a raised surface texture. This didn’t work as well as acrylic paint would have but it is hard to work with 3d texture in an a5 sketchbook.
The faces are usually a lot smoother than the rest of the piece and they appear to be made in pencil so I mainly used that.
My favourite part of the piece is the hair and wings. I really like the way they almost blend together.
Wing texture test (left) - Recreation (right)
Wing texture and gold clothing