When it comes to the Chinese zodiac, this year belongs to the monkey, as Japanese illustrator Kouzou Sakai points out in his first Instagram post of 2016. The surreal image of an ape holding up a tree that is also the night sky is typical of his imaginative style. Sakai captures both emotional and physical feelings remarkably well in simple artworks. Visualizing the last day of work before New Years Eve festivities, he draws a business man surfing across through a cloud of scattered papers. The belly becomes a glass of beer in an all too accurate summary of the after effects of chugging. All of it is rendered as clean, crisply as the fresh start of the new year—unless that NYE hangover was regrettable enough to give 2016 a jagged start.
 

See more of Kozou Sakai’s work on Instagram.

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