Usa Shrine is a famous Shinto shrine located in the city of Usa, in Oita Prefecture, Japan.  It's the oldest shrine of its particular breed of Shinto, dedicated as it is to Emperor Oujin, Tutelary God of Warriors and Ruler of Ancient Japan.  It is the second most famous shrine in the country.  It's also within a few miles of my new apartment, so I thought it'd make a good reference for my travel blog backdrop (which is, incidentally, what this little pixel is for).  Said blog can be found at http://overhillandwater.tumblr.com.

As mentioned above, I needed a header, and I wanted it to be related to the town I'll be in, but I didn't want to use a photo someone else had taken, so I just looked up pictures of the shrine and did a quick and dirty illustration.  Because of this speed, I have a couple complaints on this one, not least being how unrefined certain areas (*cough* *cough* *ROOF* *cough* *CLOUDS* *cough*) are.  That said, it serves its purpose just fine, so unless I start feeling REALLY sketchy about the little errors I probably won't be revisiting this for a while.

The palette is my own; it's actually the same palette I'd been developing for Rain and other, similar projects.  That's probably my favorite part about this image, actually; the colors work together better than I thought when used for illustration.

For the curious, the Kanji on the left read "Usa-shi," which is the name of the city in which the Shrine is located.  It sounds like a pretty cool place; I'm pretty stoked to be living there.

Thirteen colors, made in aseprite as always.