hokkaido in mid-march

Since you don't look out of my window every day like I do, you probably can't tell that this is a photo of spring. But take my word for it; it contains many significant differences from a photo taken through the same window in winter.

For one thing, the heavy cover of snow has broken up enough that you can see an exposed corner of our garage. For another, the four long legs which hold up the blue-green kerosene tank are still hidden in the snow, but the tank itself is no longer buried.

And most importantly, some of the branches of our huge but temporarily squashed hydrangea bushes are sticking up out of the snow. If you look carefully, you will see that there are leaf buds on the otherwise bare branches. It may be two or more months before the leaves actually unfold, but the buds are definitely there.

Welcome to March in Hokkaido.

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

taking the snow in stride

The snow. It never stops. You can scream and tear your hair out, or you can try to find something about it that makes you smile. This etegami was inspired by a friend who was so exhausted from the never-ending snow shoveling, that she lost her mind for a moment and started singing "Oh what a beautiful morning" (from the soundtrack of Oklahoma), with a twist in the lyrics. If this song is new to you, please google it.

house and home

My daughter moved to a snow-less part of Japan about eight years ago. Now that she doesn't have to deal with the reality of living with snow for six months of the year, she gets a touristy thrill from brief visits to Hokkaido during the winter holidays. She took this photo of our house a couple weeks ago, and it became the inspiration for the first of the etegami in my new series of whimsical houses.

postscript: Bozena Wojtaszek of The Textile Cuisine sent me a wonderful quilted postcard which she says was inspired by my verbal and visual descriptions of our house in the snow. Check out her blog and her Etsy shop. You'll love them!! The card is in my mailart gallery blog.

illustration friday (snow)

It was almost exactly a year ago that I was commissioned to make an etegami to illustrate the name of a newborn child whose parents had named her "Fuuka." This is an alternate reading for the Japanese characters which are usually read kaza-hana or kaza-bana (literally: "wind flowers"), and are a poetic reference to snowflakes that dance in the wind on a sunny day. What a lovely name for a little girl.

Here is another favorite snow-themed etegami of mine. This one is an etegami-collage illustrating a poem by Misuzu Kaneko (1903 – 1930), the author of many delightful poems and songs for children.

And finally, an etegami painted years ago-- my very first attempt to illustrate snow. The scanned image isn't able to catch the very pale blue of snow perched on top of some Mountain Ash berries. Snow has become a frequent model for my etegami since those early days. After all, I live in what is officially rated the snowiest major city on earth, and we are surrounded by the stuff in its many forms for 6 months of every year.

snow city sapporo

For this week's Illustration Friday challenge (topic: "forward") I'm posting my latest illustrated map to show you how my hometown tries to maintain a forward-looking mindset about the huge amount of snow that we have to deal with for six months of every year. You can see a bigger version of the map, along with my other illustrated maps, here, on the They Draw and Travel website.

layers of snow (misuzu kaneko series #4)

With an average yearly snowfall of 630 cm (248 inches), Sapporo has the dubious honor of being the "snowiest major city" in the world. We try to think of snow as a resource rather than a liability, but sometimes it's hard to maintain that perspective. In 1972 Sapporo hosted the Winter Olympics, the first ever held in Asia, and of course, we are famous for the Sapporo Snow Festival, which draws 2 million tourists from around the world, more than doubling the city's population of 1.9 million. Speaking of which, this year's Snow Festival starts on February 6th and goes until the 12th. Give me a shout if you plan to be here for it. I will be watching it on the TV screen in the warmth of my living room. : )

Note: The translation of the Misuzu Kaneko poem accompanying the etegami collage is my own work.

illustration friday (twirl)

The Japanese characters are read kaza-hana or kaza-bana (literally: "wind flowers"), and are a poetic reference to snowflakes that dance in the wind on a sunny day. The inspiration for the snowflakes in this etegami were actually crocheted doilies. ;p

dust of snow

A friend of mine, a fellow fan of the poetry of Robert Frost, challenged me to make an etegami illustrating Frost's poem "Dust of Snow." I tried one thing after another, and finally had to be satisfied with this etegami collage.

It shows a man's winter cap dusted with snow. I painted the cap on a washi postcard in the traditional Etegami manner, then cut it out and glued it to a sheet of paper which I'd printed all over with the words of the poem in very small blue type. The bold black words were typed over a different sheet of paper which I'd printed all over in very small pink type. Then I cut the bold black words out for gluing onto the card. I kind of like the effect, but you may feel it makes the card look too busy.

Here's a different sort of attempt, a straight etegami with the crow taking center stage. The words are written in the large, blotchy letters typically produced by a bamboo dip pen. The awkwardness of this one has a sort of appeal too.

Which do you prefer?

illustration friday (winter)

Harness bells accompanied by a quote from one of my favorite winter poems, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost. This poem always brings back fond memories from my childhood, before paved roads and snowplows became common in rural Hokkaido, and we rode in horse-drawn sleds to visit our friends during the New Year holiday.