the ainu and the fox

Another etegami from my fox series, this time with a quote from The Ainu And The Fox, an Ainu folk tale rewritten for children by Kayano Shigeru and translated into English by me. To learn more about this book, read this post on my Project Uepeker blog.

fox in the snow

This is another etegami from my Fox series. I was looking up the lyrics to a heart-breaking Japanese love song that I remembered from my youth, and discovered the song is originally in French! Since many of my etegami friends are French speakers, I decided to use the original French words on this etegami. I hope I wrote them correctly...

Here's an English translation:
The snow is falling
You won't come tonight
The snow is falling
And my heart is dressed in black

what does the fox say?

My response to the lyrics of that Norwegian music video that went viral not long ago.

illustration friday (fragile)

What power and resiliency our planet has! And how teeming with life. And yet, that life can be so fragile. When the honey bees recover (as I believe they will), I will watch them with even greater fascination and affection. I share a name with them, you see. Deborah comes from the Hebrew word for bee, and in spite of my nervousness around insects in general, I've felt a kinship with bees since childhood.

sniffing dog and cloud-gazing cat

These images will be going into my new Etegami Cats and Etegami Doggies desk calendars for 2015.

sunbeams

Inspired by the Showa era goldfish vending stalls. These were most often set up along the approaches to local shrines and temples with dozens of other specialty stalls that enlivened summer festivals in Japan (and still do). Back then, the glass globes (miniature goldfish bowls) hung from bamboo slats under the eaves of the stall-- a prop to make customers feel cooler in the sultry evenings of high summer, I think.

Other goldfish are sold from tanks set on the ground, and children pay for a chance to scoop them up with plastic-framed paper scoops that usually get soggy and tear before they can catch any fish. So they pay for another scoop. And another. As long as the coins that are clutched in their sweaty little palms last.

more etegami uchiwa (handheld flat fans)