I'm planning on doing a series of watercolour paintings on female creatures from japanese folklore to get better at watercolouring in general (and because I find asian mythology really interesting). Here's the first one, done kind of as a warm-up and testing out this new watercolour paper that I purchased. I finally found watercolour paper that I actually like, and which doesn't crinkle up annoyingly even when a lot of water is applied! :3 Hopefully the other paintings will be a bit less portrait-y and show more background, but since this was a test I did it on a very small piece of paper.

Kuchisake-onna is a beautiful woman that haunts the streets of towns and cities during the night carrying a sharp object (usually a knife or a scythe) with her mouth covered with a cloth or one of those health-mask thingies. If a person happens to come across her, she will stop them and ask a question: "Am I beautiful?". The person generally tends to answer with a "yes", since she is a pretty lady even with the funny mask covering half of her face. She then takes off her mask, revealing her mouth which is hideously cut open from ear to ear and asks again, "Am I beautiful?"
Usually at this point the person who looks at her is horrified and runs off screaming, or then answers no. She kills them on the spot if they're men, and makes them into another kuchisake-onna if they're women.
If the person still agrees that she's beautiful even after seeing her hideous mouth, she usually becomes very happy and spares their life. Some versions of the tale have her killing the person anyway though.

Any suggestions for paintings will be welcomed. So far I've been thinking of painting Yuki-onna, a female yuurei, rokurokubi, futakuchi-onna, ohaguro-bettari and, as a special exception since it's not from japanese mythology, kuntilanak from Indonesian folklore.


Media: pencil, watercolour, bottle-ink