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Books I Should Finish
I don’t mean finish reading. I mean finish writing. A couple days back, I was looking for a file that I am sure I started a couple months back. Was it on my computer? In the cloud? I poked around both spaces. First I discovered that I am really bad at filing my work. I…
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New circles
After building 555, I wasn’t sure what my next big project would be. Well, it has turned into a fluster of expanding my circle of acquaintances and activities. I am making time to get to know the neighbors, build rapport, find support, be a useful member of the community, and ensure my life is not…
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One painting, three works
I sat down to paint an abstract self portrait yesterday and ended up with three artworks for the price of one. My plan was to paint on canvas using a technique I’d seen recently. I knew I wanted the end result to have a woven effect and lots of color, but I didn’t have a…
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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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