So, I have one thing to start off with:

This has absolutely nothing to do with Naruto, Pokemon, or any other anime.

Now that that is out of the way...

This painting came about because I was assigned to copy any one piece of ancient Chinese/Indian/Japanese art of my choosing as a semester project for my Asian Art History class. Obviously I'm a bit biased towards Japanese art, and I ended up choosing Hiroshige's "Fox Fires on New Year's Eve at Oji" woodblock print, part of his "100 views of Edo" series. Here's the original: [link]

In Japanese folklore, foxes are believed to have magical powers, and the legend goes that every year at Oji all the foxes would gather and have a meeting to discuss their mischief and plan for the next year. As I was working on it, I began thinking that the legend was really rather neat, and it might be fun to try my own take on it. So I did.

I added in a few extra bits of kitsune lore for my piece-- notably the nine-tailed fox. Foxes are believed to gain one extra tail for every 100 years they live, with nine tails being the wisest and most powerful. Nine-tailed foxes are also believed to turn gold or white upon receiving their last tail. So in my picture I ended up drawing a nine-tailed fox sort of "schooling" the rest of them.

I'm quite pleased with how the lighting turned out here-- it was quite difficult to get the reflections correct, especially in the snow, but it turned out really well; even better than I hoped.

I'm also pleased with how well I managed to scan it. I was having some trouble earlier getting the color correct-- I think I found a way to fix that now.

Materials are india ink and watercolor; the original is about 13 x 20"

Prints are available for $10 each plus shipping.