a week to valentine's day

These are some of the etegami I painted for this year's Valentine's Day. The topmost one was inspired by, and quotes from, the poem "Valentine" by Carol Ann Duffy. These etegami represent many different kinds of love -- romantic, familial, friendship, and God's love. They, and many others from previous years, are available as printed postcards on my RedBubble gallery if you're interested. : )

illustration friday (silent #2)

Here are two more from the Holiday Daruma Series, which I introduced in the Halloween post. In addition to the two etegami posted here, yesterday I finally finished the Christmas etegami I plan to send out this winter to my closest friends and family. It also features a daruma doll. I don't want to spoil the surprise for them, so that one remains secret for now. : )

easter etegami

Happy Easter.

rabbits galore

This is one of the many etegami I painted as a New Year's card for 2011 Year of the Rabbit. The words accompanying this solemn-faced rabbit are a Hausa proverb.

Here's one for people who prefer cute bunnies.

The inspiration for these simple bunnies comes from the bunny-shaped confections that become popular in Japan during rabbit years. I'm planning to post a recipe for these usagi manju later this month on my Wagashi blog.

I also did a bunch of etegami collages. This one was inspired by the lunar eclipse. Whereas Americans refer to "the man in the moon," in Japan, we see a rabbit pounding sticky rice with a mallet. I imagined the over-worked rabbit taking the eclipse as an opportunity to take a brief break. I thought of hanging a sign on the darkened moon with the words "gone fishing," or "out to lunch," but in the end I just labeled it "lunar eclipse" to limit clutter.

Here are some of the other collages I made by gluing etegami rabbits to backgrounds of colored washi, a page from an antique book of singing poems, or pieces torn from an old Japanese-English dictionary. Due to the rabbit-in-the-moon tradition, rabbits and the moon make a natural combination in Japanese art.

nengajou (received n.y. cards)

The message gives the traditional New Year greeting with the addition of a private message to me. The image depicts one of the seven lucky gods that is referred to a lot at this time of year.


Shows tiger (2010 zodiac) turning into a rabbit (2011 zodiac). Printed words translate roughly to "Having long ears doesn't make you a rabbit." In his private message, the artist says he's resolved to quit pretending to be other than what he is.

This lino-cut rabbit is accompanied by the words: "May this year be full of happy things." The artist is a certified etegami instructor and reminds me time and time again that the best etegami is simple and childlike.

Rabbit and carrot etegami with "Beginning of Spring" in gold ink. This is another common way to refer to the New Year. Even if the cold and snow continues for many months, New Years Day is when we rejoice in the expectation of Spring and in new beginnings.


This is the second year I've receive a nengajou from this artist, and once again she has delighted me with her creative ideas. The card is overlaid with soft, fluffy, wrinkled washi paper and stamped with an utterly adorable bunny seal. On the other side is her greeting: "Happy Fluffy New Year!"

I've come to expect gorgeous colors & fine technique from this etegami artist, and this nengajou does not disappoint. The words are one more version of the traditional New Year greeting done in strokes oozing with character.

This nengajou is from a new etegami friend whose work has been posted several times on my mailart gallery blog. It may be hard to see, but the gold ink added to the bunny and the waves conveys wishes of good fortune and happiness. The accompanying words say "With a Fresh/Renewed Heart and Mind."

It is already New Year's Day in Japan, despite what date might appear at the top of this post. The mailman delivered the first batch of New Year cards, presumably the ones that were posted before the Dec 24th deadline. Cards from those who mailed theirs after the deadline (that includes me :p) will trickle in during the next few days. I'll post more soon. : ) To learn more about the Japanese tradition of exchanging New Year postcards, check out this post from last year.

poinsettia

I made several different designs for this year's Christmas card, including a Japanese version of the one shown here. The words are the original Latin for the title of a well-known Christmas hymn "Oh Come, Oh Come Emmanuel."

You can order greeting card and postcard prints from RedBubble

all kinds of tigers

While I was delighted by the number of nengajou (traditional Japanese New Year cards) I received this year, the percentage of hand-drawn cards was probably the smallest in decades, and has me puzzled. I had imagined that the ailing economy would result in an increase of hand-made cards, but apparently this does not follow. Of the three cards I've posted here, only the one in the center was done by traditional etegami method-- with sumi ink on soft washi cards. I don't know if you can tell that the sender used gold paint on this card. Gold and silver gansai paints are not included in standard gansai sets. They have to be ordered separately, and are used for special occasions such as New Year's.

The card on the right is a block print. Yes, the cards depict tigers. Not kitty cats. It seems that in these modern times, people hesitate to use ferocious images on their felicitous greeting cards. I've noticed this in other years, whether it be the year of the mouse or the year of the dragon. Images tend to be cute or humorous. The card on the left was made on a computer, but I included it because it is an original design by an elderly sculptor friend of mine. Notice the stripes hanging off the tiger's body. The accompanying words declare the sender's intent to lose weight in 2010.

new year's cards

Japan has a long tradition of exchanging New Year's greetings in writing, apparently going as far back as the Nara period (AD 700s). It wasn't until 1873, when the Japan Postal Service began to print standardized postcards requiring less postage than an ordinary letter, that the idea of postcard greetings began to catch on. In 1899, the current system of nenga yuubin (New Year mail) was conceived, in which all mail marked as New Year's greetings, and which is posted within a specific time frame in December, will be delivered en mass on New Year's Day. There are lots of other delightful historical details on the subject that I don't have room to post here, but maybe you can read them for yourself on Wikipedia Japan (in Japanese only, sorry).

There are many cool things about traditional Japanese New Year's cards, not the least of which is how images and words are used. Certain images are associated with the New Year holiday specifically, and with spring (which New Year's day is symbolically the start of) in general. For example, the etegami I drew for New Year's 2009 depicts sprouting water chestnuts (water caltrops). The sprouts make it a felicitous image and conducive to word play, a common device with etegami in general, but especially at New Year's. The accompanying words translate roughly to: [the new year brings with it] the sprouts of new possibilities.

For New Year's 2010, I made several new designs. One depicts a toy top, symbolic of the new year because it is one of a group of traditional toys that children used to play with during the New Year holidays. The accompanying words say: May 2010 be a well-balanced year [for you]. Word play again. The rest of my holiday etegami are variations on tiger images, because 2010 is the Year of the Tiger. I've posted one of these here. The animal representing a particular year is probably the most common motif for Japanese New Year's cards.

Not all New Year's cards are etegami, of course. These days most people whip up greeting cards on their computers, using stock images and formulaic words. If you have over 100 people on your greeting card list, as I do, it really is too much to expect of yourself to hand-make each one. What I do is draw several original designs, and color-copy my favorites to send to the people on my list. For my fellow etegami artists, though, I do make an effort to send original cards only.

Tell me what kind of cards you will be sending this year. Something hand-made I hope. After the holidays I plan to post a sample of some of the etegami cards I receive from my Japanese etegami colleagues.

christmas cards

Time passes very quickly for me these days, but never so fast as when I notice that it's time to make my holiday greeting cards. I try to get Christmas cards posted before the end of November, because at this time of the year, even air mail delivery to overseas addresses can be delayed beyond belief.

The etegami pictured here is the one I drew for Christmas 2007. It depicts the berries of the mountain ash (rowan) tree, each berry covered with a cap of snow. Mountain ash is one of my favorite trees, and while they grow profusely in the mountains of Hokkaido, they are also a favorite for planting along city streets. The berries start out pale and yellow, hardly noticeable in the green foliage, but by the end of fall, when the leaves have dropped off the branches and it begins to snow, the berries are bright, bright red.

Snow is a tricky thing to depict on a white card. I added blue shadows to make the snow more distinct, but this didn't show up very well in digital form. Nevertheless, it remains one of my favorite etegami. In my next post, I want to write about nengajou, the New Year cards that are traditionally exchanged in Japan. All the mail art I do now has its roots in the tradition of nengajou. Stay tuned!

partridges on a pear (tree)

I've been doing a lot of experimenting lately, giving etegami a bit of chigiri-e accent, or combining traditional etegami with the collage-style mail art that seems to be so popular in the West. Today I was looking at some pear drawings that were left over from one year I'd used pears for my Christmas card design. Although I'd been somewhat disappointed in the drawings, I received a lot of positive feedback when I posted them online. So I ended up keeping the leftover drawings I would otherwise have thrown away. Today I decided to use them as a base for a hybrid mailart greeting card, by gluing some cutouts of partridges onto the drawings of the pears. I still have a strong resistance to messing with traditional etegami method. I'm not sure what to think of these hybrids. Shall I put them in the post? The jury is still out.