About
In the beginning...
My name is Rachel, and I am a Japanese-Canadian artist born in Burnaby, B.C..
I began drawing at the same age I became fascinated with biology. Starting with insects as a toddler, I moved to dinosaurs, reptiles, bats and then birds. For a decade, I focused on drawing birds with influences from Yoshitaka Amano, James F. Lansdowne, Yusuke Nakamura and Haida art.
After completing high school and a game design program, my focus shifted to botany and microbiology, and I spent several years working with digital art. I was further inspired by artists like Jim Henson, Ernst Haeckel, Volker Merschky and Simone Pfaff. Finding a mentor to teach me tattoo seemed impossible, so instead I designed and sold tattoos and assets for others. In my free time, I especially enjoyed drawing out my dreams and doing detailed botanical and anatomical illustrations.
Now...
Unable to afford art supplies, I relied only on red and black pens and printer paper for decades before investing in a few shades of grey. These materials forced me to utilize stippling instead of shading, to alternate colours instead of adding new colours, and to balance the heavy reds and blacks with negative geometric spaces, forming my main art style.
Currently, I am a full time student pursuing degrees in plant pathology and mycology while training under my mentor as a tattoo artist, working at The Lotus House.