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Painting Yatsufusa
This beagle is the key to our new animal hospital. Fujii-san and Yatsufusa met Dr. Aoyama at a dog park in Tokyo many years ago. Because of that encounter and the friendship that developed, Aoyama-sensei and her family moved to Kamogawa to build a house with an attached veterinary office. So I thought that a…
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Resisting Growth – a Meditation
On Sundays in my yoga class we focus on meditation. Every week we do a different form of meditation, because people find their way to inner stillness from many vectors. Today we practiced my own system, Drawing Meditations, where we use art to find insights, inner peace, and connection. And it was a remarkable session…
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Farmpark Koi Nobori
Today I participated in a children’s festival at the newly opened Soil to Soul Farmpark. The weather was perfect, there was a huge turnout and 23 people made koi nobori at my stall. I sold almost all the large fish and about half the small ones, which was opposite of what I guessed I’d do.…
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Artsy Koi Nobori
Koi nobori are carp streamers that fly on Children’s Day. On Friday, May 3rd, I’ll host a koi nobori art activity at the Soil to Soul Farmpark kids’ festival. Megumi and I both saw artsy foreign koi nobori that are making the rounds on social media and she was inspired to ask me to do…
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Origami Vision Boarding, part 3
After matching actions to colors and creating a collage, it was time to paint. Some people in the workshop opted to work with other mediums, but I grabbed my big box of acrylic paint and had some fun. I actually painted two paintings. The first one (pictured above) felt wrong, so I abandoned it and…
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Origami Vision Boarding, Part 2
After defining my actions and assigning them colors (see part 1), I got to work on a collage using origami paper. I began by cutting some random shapes and moved them around on the page until they started to tell a story. I filled in the details as the story unfolded itself in my head.…
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Happy 2024
Wishing you all the best in the year of the Dragon. And here’s a peek at the creative process and rejected designs for this 11th in the “Elephant as Zodiac Animal” series:
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Making Botanical Colors
Surrounded by so many plants through the seasons here at 555, I decided to try my hand at making art supplies. It’s fun to experiment with the process of extracting color. If you decide to try this – and especially if you are using unknown or inedible plants – please do it outside or in…
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Duetting with Dad
As a housewarming gift, Jenny shipped me a piece of Dad’s glass art. When I unwrapped it, I wept. I am so happy to have another piece to hang in the windows here. When Dad was learning the techniques of glass painting, he copied the church windows of medieval glass masters. Here’s what he wrote…
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Nengajou jollity
Today I sent out our nengajou, the holiday cards that are delivered on January 1 in Japan. I am not 100% sure that’s going to work properly for my cards this year. I didn’t buy the special pre-franked cards the post office sells, instead drawing my designs on postcards I already had on hand. So…
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