This Tamamo-no-Mae urban legend poster started as a distraction.
An annoying one, honestly.
That image just wouldn’t leave me alone. Really. I had actual client deadlines waiting, invoices to send, emails I didn’t want to answer—and instead I kept thinking about some dusty silk behind a window. Not ideal.
It was a drizzly Thursday in late October, maybe around 4pm. The kind of light where everything looks flat and tired. I was walking through Ningyocho, cutting through a back alley I’ve used forever, when I noticed an old tailor shop. Half the sign gone. Window cloudy. Inside: bolts of silk, unevenly folded, some hanging loose like they’d been left mid-thought.
The smell hit first. Wet wood. Old fabric. Rain that never quite dries.
I pulled out my Fujifilm X100V and snapped a reference photo through the glass. The lens was probably smudged from living in my coat pocket all day, so the photo’s kind of soft anyway. It’s still sitting on my desktop in a folder called “Inspiration,” mixed in with screenshots, bad scans, and things I swear I’ll organize someday.
Days later, I was still thinking about it. At the grocery store. On the bus. While pretending to listen to someone talk. That’s usually a bad sign. It means a piece has already started.
I didn’t want to draw Tamamo-no-Mae directly. I wanted that feeling of maybe she’s there, maybe she isn’t. That hesitation.
📚 Story Description
How it came together (or: the parts I didn’t screw up too badly).
Early sketches were rough. I mean, rough. I tried adding actual fox tails at one point. Looked cool for about five minutes. Then I digitized it and—boom—cheap Halloween clipart energy. Immediate regret. Deleted the entire layer. Wasted two evenings. Complained to my wall.
I also painted eyes. Sharp, fox-like ones. Spent a full hour tweaking them. Then I stared at the screen and realized the tension was gone. Everything was explained. So I deleted those too. Felt a little dramatic hitting delete on something that took an hour, but whatever. It was the right call.
What stuck in the end was the fake motion. Fabric that looks like it’s moving but obviously isn’t. Edges that just kind of fray out into nothing. Sounds dumb when I say it out loud, but it works.
That’s her spot now. Not some fanged monster jumping out at you. More like a polite presence you shouldn’t trust. Something that’s already there before you notice it.
✨ Some Boring But Useful Notes If You Ever Print This
I left a lot of negative space on purpose. Not because minimalism is trendy—because Tamamo-no-Mae never fully arrives. The empty areas give your brain room to do the scary part on its own.
Color was a fight. I skipped bright gold early on. Too loud. Too confident. I ended up with something closer to old festival decorations at sunset—kind of dull, kind of unstable. In low light, it flickers just enough to feel wrong. That wasn’t planned. I noticed it during print tests and decided not to “fix” it.
Print tip, learned the hard way:
I tested this on Red River Palo Duro Etching paper. Warm tone, slight texture. Looks great. I also wasted like three sheets of expensive paper before getting the color balance right. Lesson learned. Avoid glossy finishes. They kill everything interesting.
If you’re hanging it at home, warm Edison bulbs help. Cool LEDs make the golds go flat. It looks especially good above a low console in an entryway, or as the quiet-but-not-really centerpiece of a bedroom reading corner.
Everything here is drawn from scratch in Procreate, then cleaned up in Photoshop. No stock assets. No tracing ukiyo-e plates. I’m stubborn about that. I don’t want to repeat old folklore illustrations—I want a version that feels like it could survive in a modern city.
Tamamo-no-Mae’s story stuck with me after reading Hiroko Yoda’s Yokai Attack! back in 2014. The version where she’s clever more than cruel—that one never really left.
Currently drinking terrible instant coffee while writing this. Portland winter problems.
— PPR, 10+ years designing abstract posters inspired by folklore (mostly Japanese and Eastern European).
Based in Portland, OR. Tokyo still feels like a second home.
Before I wrap this up:
What’s the creepiest everyday object that’s ever given you yokai vibes? An old mirror? A closed shop? Something that just felt… off?
I sound like a weirdo collecting creepy moments, but hey, it works for me.
Anyway, I should probably go organize that Inspiration folder before it crashes my computer. Thanks for reading this far. Okay. Back to work.
Originally reprinted from: Vow & Void Studio - https://frpaper.top/archives/1968