the blue period

Fog Cat

 I can't remember when blue wasn't my absolutely favorite color. And blue goes so well with poetry, don't you think?

The first two etegami posted here were experiments with watercolor inks and watercolor paper--materials I am not at all familiar with, as strange as that may sound to you. They are rare examples of the image coming to me before the words do. But as soon as I finished painting the cat, I just knew that it was the Fog Cat from the Carl Sandburg poem Fog.

Blue Pigeon

The words quoted on the blue pigeon etegami are from the poem Japanese Lullaby by Eugene Field.

Santoka's Owl

The barred owl was done in the traditional etegami manner, with my trusty and true sumi ink, gansai paints, and washi paper, as suits the classic Taneda Santoka haiku. All the originals are for sale on my Etsy shop.

tsuyu-kusa (asiatic dayflower)

On hot summer days, the color blue can be so soothing. I picked a few stalks of tsuyu-kusa from our yard to draw for this very reason. The flowers are actually tiny. But close observation reveals how detailed they are, and in trying to capture that detail, I ended up drawing the flowers as though they had been magnified. A literal translation of the name of this plant is "dew grass." It brought to mind (especially in this heat) a verse from the book of Job: They waited for me as for the rain (29:23). I used a bamboo quill pen for the border of the image and for the words. I think the irregularities make the lines look almost as though they were formed from little drops of water.