Greetings yokai fans!

Today I’m sharing the two-page landscape for the “In the City” chapter of The Fox’s Wedding.

Our trail of kitsune-bi follows a river through a city in the twilight hours. The sketch had some people wandering about the city, but I wanted to emphasize the otherworldliness of the scene, and the effect was better without people walking through the streets.

The village in the picture is based on the ruins of Ichijodani–a ruined village not far from my home which was the center of power of the Asakura clan of Echizen during the middle ages. In its heyday it was one of the largest centers of population in Japan. Although the village itself was completely washed away in a series of floods, there has been an ongoing reconstruction/excavation for a few decades now to help restore the archaeological site. There’s a partial reconstructed village where they’ve rebuilt some of the homes and shops that stood along the main street of the valley, and walking through there is like stepping through a window to the past. It’s a really cool location that I love to visit to feel inspiration.