megumi

There’s the Sasebo River and the Albuquerque Bridge that spans it. Sasebo Park and Nimitz Park lie beyond the river. MINATOMACHI FACTORY can be found on the second floor of a building surrounded by water and greenery in Sasebo City, Nagasaki Prefecture. Megumi’s usual spot is a seat by the window overlooking this expansive view, which makes her feel equally expansive. Here, megumi calmly and slowly glides her felt-tipped pen across her sketchbook.

The shipyard, foreigner-friendly bars, and Gunkanjima (Hashima Island). The lantern festival and the Sasebo Burger. Many of megumi’s works feature views and food from Sasebo. Staff select the photographs and suggest them to her. With her personal touch, megumi adds new contours to familiar scenes and objects. Her outlines give off a charming and warm impression.

“Any motif can become an interesting work of art through megumi’s filter.”

TANAKA Satoko, a staff member who supports megumi’s creative activities, told us this.

On the day of our visit, she was drawing desserts and drinks from a coffee shop called Komeda’s Coffee. While looking at a photo of pie pastries topped with soft-serve ice cream and a mug filled with coffee, megumi grasps an outline that’s “just right,” somewhere in between roundness and edginess, and converts it into a line drawing.

To add color, megumi scans her line drawings to a computer and colors them in using Adobe’s Illustrator software. She is skilled at using the Live Paint feature and applies the colors quickly and efficiently. The way in which she works has an artisan-like quality. She has tried coloring with colored pencils and crayons in the past, but ultimately settled on this method.

The colors in the first version are based on the original photo. From the second version onwards, her coloring follows an entirely unique approach—the soft-serve ice cream may be pink, while the face of a person is green or purple. If the original photo is in black and white, the first version will be in megumi’s own colors.

She also has a series of reproductions of famous paintings. Compositions by Munch, Vermeer, and Botticelli are combined with megumi’s free and vigorous coloring, creating scenes that are both familiar and unfamiliar to the viewer. This momentarily baffles our brains, and then, gradually, we start to think, “how wonderful,” or “how interesting.” It has the effect of expanding the viewer’s frame of thinking a little. Megumi’s standard practice is to create four or so versions in different colors. When the four versions are lined up, the colors gradually shift from those of the real world to those that only exist in megumi’s inner world, creating a strange sense of movement.

MINATOMACHI FACTORY is equipped with a garment printer that can print images directly on fabric. Once they are completed, megumi’s works are quickly printed on fabric on the spot and then sent to the nearby SASEBO CLOTH & ACCESSORY FACTORY, which is run by the same company, where they are cut and sewn into pouches, handkerchiefs, and other cloth products. Textiles designed by the staff that incorporate parts of illustrations into patterns are also made into bags and pouches.

Megumi is also adept at light work such as cutting out and assembling the paper backing of the packages for these products using a utility knife, which she does from time to time.

Megumi frequented several different facilities prior to MINATOMACHI FACTORY, but this was the first place she has stayed at for a long time. It has been about nine years since she began coming here. At first, she intended to learn Excel and Word, hoping to acquire useful skills for employment.

However, when a staff member encouraged her to try drawing, the illustrations she created were a hit. She entered her illustrations in a public contest organized by Komeda’s Coffee and was selected as the winner. These illustrations were used on the packaging of soybean snacks and turned into posters for franchisees to display in their stores. The posters, which were issued with serial numbers and limited to 100 copies, completely sold out. Her business cards are also popular; for these, she draws the client’s portrait, and the design is finished at MINATOMACHI FACTORY.

Currently, megumi commutes to MINATOMACHI FACTORY two days a week. On the other days, she works at home, importing her drawings to her computer and coloring them in a work-from-home arrangement.

Megumi told us in a few words that she was happy that her work had been chosen for the packaging and posters at Komeda’s Coffee, but that she had yet to actually visit the coffee shop. She seems to be a true artisan after all.

Among her works was a reproduction of Van Gogh’s self-portrait. Van Gogh’s portraits can give off a strong impression of gloominess, perhaps because the artist’s gloomy story is imprinted in our minds. In Megumi’s reproduction, however, Van Gogh had a much brighter expression. Besides,

“This Van Gogh doesn’t have a sleeve, you know.”

SAKAI Kayo, a staff member, shared this information on the sly. Van Gogh is wearing a jacket in the original painting, but in megumi’s version, his arm is bare from the shoulder down. Van Gogh looks a little more cheerful in sleeveless attire. Once again, we felt a sense of delight as this image expanded our narrow frames of mind.