An Afternoon at Work
December 2019
As a gift for my mother, I combined her love of ukiyo-e woodblock prints with a humorous narrative of the average afternoon at home with our menagerie of animals while she works. While ukiyo-e prints often feature beautiful women or kabuki actors, after the Tenpo Reforms in the mid-19th century sought to control public displays of wealth, ukiyo-e artists turned to landscapes and narrative scenes as their subjects.
I decided on a limited color palette and used a high overhead perspective to call back to my source material, as well as imitating the smooth linework found in my references.
Who's Keiran?
Keiran Pillman is a designer, illustrator, and researcher living in Rochester, NY. They have a BFA in New Media Design from the Rochester Institute of Technology (2015), and a MFA in Art History from the University of Massachusetts Amherst (2017). They have worked as a freelance designer and illustrator for seven years, doing projects for a variety of clients.
In their spare time, Keiran enjoys running, hiking, writing both fiction and non-fiction, and serving as a loyal minion for their cat.