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Description
PLEASE FULL VIEW - The image looks a little pixilated when looking at the smaller version.

This is Makie Otono-Tachibana, who is one of my favorite characters from Hiroaki Samura's Blade of the Immortal. Her love for Anotsu, the man who only views her as a tool to further his cause rather than a lover, is one of the saddest tragedies in the series. As Anotsu puts it, she is the only kenshi (swordmen/woman) he has ever met that can best him. She feels torn between her existence as a geisha and her hatred of, but skill with, the blade, which Anotsu encourages. It was these feelings that I wished to portray in the picture, that of a woman torn between two paths.

The image was started in Gimp 2 using a mouse and finished in Photoshop CS2 with my new Wacom Intuos3. The original file was 4200 by 3000. A close-up of Makies head/chest as well as the writing to the right of her can be viewed here .

I had originally planned to have a paper lantern at the bottom left hand corner, to create a visible point of illumination for the piece, but the image look a little cluttered with it so I left it out. I had also wanted to have Makie’s shamisen leaning up against the screen, in its two parts after her double bladed three-section-staff (which is called the Haru-no-Okina meaning Old Man of Spring) had been removed from it. However, this also distracted too much from the image of Makie herself, mainly due to the large and rather bright background of the flowers on the screen.

This image of Makie was done for three reasons.

Firstly I love the character and have wanted to draw her.
I also decided to draw her after a conversation with ,
and also as a work to enter into 's Blade of the Immortal fan art contest.

Description
PLEASE FULL VIEW - The image looks a little pixilated when looking at the smaller version.

This is Makie Otono-Tachibana, who is one of my favorite characters from Hiroaki Samura's Blade of the Immortal. Her love for Anotsu, the man who only views her as a tool to further his cause rather than a lover, is one of the saddest tragedies in the series. As Anotsu puts it, she is the only kenshi (swordmen/woman) he has ever met that can best him. She feels torn between her existence as a geisha and her hatred of, but skill with, the blade, which Anotsu encourages. It was these feelings that I wished to portray in the picture, that of a woman torn between two paths.

The image was started in Gimp 2 using a mouse and finished in Photoshop CS2 with my new Wacom Intuos3. The original file was 4200 by 3000. A close-up of Makies head/chest as well as the writing to the right of her can be viewed here .

I had originally planned to have a paper lantern at the bottom left hand corner, to create a visible point of illumination for the piece, but the image look a little cluttered with it so I left it out. I had also wanted to have Makie’s shamisen leaning up against the screen, in its two parts after her double bladed three-section-staff (which is called the Haru-no-Okina meaning Old Man of Spring) had been removed from it. However, this also distracted too much from the image of Makie herself, mainly due to the large and rather bright background of the flowers on the screen.

This image of Makie was done for three reasons.

Firstly I love the character and have wanted to draw her.
I also decided to draw her after a conversation with ,
and also as a work to enter into 's Blade of the Immortal fan art contest.