This little fox has been living on my desk for the past few days — built up one careful ink line at a time. She's the second piece in a new all-ink ACEO series I've been working on, and this time I let red spider lilies grow wild around her.
She's drawn entirely in fine liner pen: layers of hatching build up the thick, windswept fur, while a few sharp confident strokes carve out her ears and the quiet intensity in her eyes. I only reached for color in a few places — a wash of deep crimson along her eyeliner, and the spider lilies and ribboning leaves that wind around her, left stark against the bare white paper so they read like the one thing in the piece that's still alive.
The flowers aren't just decoration. Red spider lilies (higanbana, in Japanese folklore) are tied to partings, the afterlife, and reunions beyond it — they bloom leafless, almost overnight, along the path between one world and the next. It felt right to surround a fox spirit with them.
Like the first piece in this series, she's painted at true ACEO size — 2.5" x 3.5", the same dimensions as a standard trading card. Every ACEO I make is a fully original, one-of-a-kind piece: no prints, no reproductions, just ink and a few hours of quiet focus. If you're new here, ACEO stands for Art Cards, Editions and Originals — a beloved format among miniature art collectors because it's affordable to collect, easy to display in a card sleeve or mini frame, and every piece is truly one of a kind.
This piece is up for auction now — bid on eBay here.
More from the Ink Series: shop this piece · No. 1, Whale Among the Clouds · No. 3, Nine-Tailed Fox
More ink pieces are coming as this series grows. Thank you for looking, and happy collecting!
— PUNPARIN