Another Wonderful Way Pro-Wrestling is Art 3

Welcome back for another look at some great art featuring professional wrestlers.

In Another Wonderful Way Pro-Wrestling is Art I talked about the wrestling centric work of Rob Schamberger. The subsequent Another Wonderful Way Pro-Wrestling is Art 2 featured more from Rob, some of the wonderfully stark, hyper realistic black and white ink drawings of Shining Wizard Designs, and an artist readers of this blog will be well familiar with who entered the realm of drawing professional wrestlers as the result of commission requests (from me).

Here I’d like to share a couple more of Juri H Chinchilla’s pieces, then spotlight a new artist to these articles who’s a bit of an awesomely unusual case.

As I’ve mentioned often, I’ve been a fan of Juri’s amazing art for several years, and her work never ceases to amaze me.

Her Personal Sketch Cards have been a great opportunity to request particular subjects and design elements, and she’s done an amazing job with depictions of subjects both priorly familiar and not.

Sareee is a truly incredible wrestler who has recently signed with WWE and was set to come stateside in February (before the pandemic necessitated her remaining in Japan for now). She’s a nine year veteran who trained and wrestled with Ring of Honor’s Jenny Rose (a ten year veteran herself) under the Diana promotion in Japan early on in both of their careers. Last December Jenny traveled back to Japan to appear on Sareee’s Special Night, an excellent show produced by Sareee herself.

Juri’s rendition of the pair of best friends is stunning, highlighted by a wonderful metallic background that makes the image of subjects themselves really pop.

Also pictured is Juri’s representation of the recently retired Tequila Saya from Ice Ribbon, showing off Saya’s great entrance gear including a gun shaped tequila bottle and bandolier of shot glasses against a colorful background befitting the Gran Maestro de Tequila.

More information about Juri’s art can be found on her artist page.

The next artist doesn’t just make art about wrestling on paper: as a wrestler herself she makes a different type of art in the ring as well.

Yappy wrestles for a women’s wrestling company in Japan named Ice Ribbon and is a little over a year into her career. She has a naturally likable presence that makes her easy to cheer for, is energetic and exciting in her matches, and is always pushing to improve and learn in these early stages of her wrestling journey. She’s heavily involved in Ice Ribbon’s interactions with foreign fans and has done a lot to reach out to and help them with things like English updates and event information and overseas purchase of Ice Ribbon merchandise.

After her debut Yappy’s personal fan art also started to gain a wider audience, and it really started to turn heads with her incredible piece depicting Ice Ribbon’s ace Tsukasa Fujimoto.

Yappy’s full illustrations are gorgeous. They feature vibrant colors, fantastic little touches and details, and often a real, dynamic sense of motion. They also capture the personalities of the subjects in a really great way.

Yappy also did a striking Tequila Saya and an energetic depiction of Ice Ribbon’s resident bratty prodigy (and I mean that in the best way possible), Tsukushi. Amid well deserved rising fan interest in her creations, these three pieces were the initial offerings via Ice Ribbon’s online shop as both the originals and limited edition prints.

Her second batch (of course again all of Ice Ribbon wrestlers) featured reigning Ice Cross Infinity Champion Maya Yukihi, Maya’s frequent Azure Revolution tag partner (and former champion herself) Risa Sera, and two of Ice Ribbon’s rookie rising stars in Suzu Suzuki and Asahi, with more likely to come. Looking forward to it. Again the way the individual wrestlers’ personalities, gimmicks, and styles are incorporated into the themes of Yappy’s art is exceptional.

Another really wonderful thing about Yappy’s art is the different styles she experiments with. She’s done some smaller pieces as thank you’s for the live signing streams including things like fun quick sketches and really cute chibi style headshots. Her work always puts a smile on my face and I hope she continues to create for a long time to come.

More information about both Yappy’s art and her wrestling can be found on Twitter.

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Thanks again to both of these artists for their impressive creations.