Jashi Obake

Obake Jashi is a character that will appear in some stories I am working on. The stories she will appear in take place in an alternate timeline and are set during what would correspond to the Edo period in our timeline. For this reason, her clothing is modeled after the clothing of the Edo period. She wears several different kosode (a type of kimono), which vary in color and can be light bluish purple, dark bluish purple, dark reddish purple, black, dark green or navy blue. Her obi can also vary in color between vermillion, garnet, saffron or whatever her color her kimono happens to be. The eyes that appear on her collar and obi are significant because they are her family's mon (emblem) and are considered deeply auspicious from their point of view. These eyes always appear on her clothing and a large eye can be found on the back of her kimono. The eyes are reference to "evil eye" superstitions and are partially an homage to Usui Uonuma from Rurouni Kenshin. Obake is a slender woman with dark circles around her eyes and short, wavy hair. She has pale skin and reddish brown eyes as well as black teeth. Obake has no alignment, but can be particularly malicious. She is a very creepy person who claims to see and communicate with spirits. Depending on the situation Obake is either completely quiet, very blunt, quite deceptive or downright rude. There is a hidden side of her that very few people see. As far as most people are concerned, she is very mischievous and loves to create chaos above all else. The flowers she's holding are Pieris japonica, a toxic plant native to Japan. She has a pouch full of coins in her other hand, coins that she probably took from some scared villager. Obake is an occultist and most people fear her as a witch or sorceress.

If it looks like there is some smudging on her face, that's because there is. I don't know why, but I ran into some really bad smudging problems during the color process. It may have been caused by something on the paper behind the page I was working on. I did what I could to correct it in GIMP and the version I have chosen to upload represents a massive improvement over the original.

Here is gypsy-tea's rough sketch of the character based on the description I gave her:
fc00.deviantart.net/fs70/f/201…

Here are some of the references I used for her outfit:
www.iz2.or.jp/english/fukusyok…
kusanome8.blog.fc2.com/blog-ca…

_{Obake Jashi © Richard Crosby
Art © Richard Crosby}