the dragonfly's spectacles

Another etegami carved out of corrugated cardboard. This one quotes the last verse of the beloved Japanese children's song "The Dragonfly's Spectacles" (Tombo no Megane). The dragonfly's spectacles are red-colored spectacles. That's because he flew through the sunset clouds; he flew through the sunset clouds.

a week of foxes

Inspired by The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

origin of quote unclear

Inspired by the Japanese children's song "Ko-Gitsune" (Little Fox)

Inspired by the Japanese children's song "Kita-Kitsune" (Northern fox)

Inspired by "Friends, Lovers, Chocolate" by Alexander McCall Smith

Inspired by the folksong "The Fox" which my mother sang to me when I was little.

A spring festival fox mask with a Kobayashi Issa haiku

illustration friday (heights--sort of)

The new Illustration Friday prompt is "heights," but oddly enough, the first thing the word brought to my mind was tadpoles. I think I was remembering a mysterious incident reported on the news last spring about tadpoles falling from the sky. There were all kinds of theories, of course, but I am satisfied with the theory that they fell from a bird's mouth (a pelican, maybe) that happened to be flying overhead. Well, once my mind got hold of the idea of tadpoles, I had to get it out of my system before I could go on to paint something more appropriate to the prompt. So I present you with my first tadpole etegami of the season. I painted it with my brand-new, sparkly "metallic" gansai paints, but you can't tell it from the scanned image. Too bad. It quotes from a funny Japanese children's song about where tadpoles come from. "Tadpoles are the children of frogs, not the grandchildren of catfish..."

frog eggs