etegami birthday cards

Ideally, all etegami should be drawn with the intended recipient in mind. Each etegami is unique; each etegami has a message; and each etegami is an intensely personal creation of the artist. (I mean, good grief, your heartbeat is captured in the lines! See the "living lines" post if you haven't already.) This makes it the perfect medium for creating a very special birthday card. The etegami posted here was drawn for a dear friend whom I have yet to meet in the flesh. But I know something of what he treasures. His pet, a Rex Rat, is one of these treasures. I drew the outline of this drawing not with the usual writing brush, but with a reed pen. We call them take-pen, which is literally "bamboo pen," but the tool I used is not technically bamboo. It's a reedy plant dried stiff, with one end shaped like an old-style fountain pen, a very narrow groove splitting the triangular tip so as to hold a bit of ink. I will discuss this tool in a future blog. I wonder how many readers will recognize where the accompanying words came from... It is part of a longer quote from a once-famous TV show, starring British actor Patrick McGoohan, called "The Prisoner." The quote is another thing that my friend treasures.