dosankodebbie's etegami notebook: wolverine

Thursday, January 16, 2014

wolverine

My husband's birthday is just around the corner, and since I've been painting animals like one possessed, I thought I'd do an animal etegami for him this year. Problem is, he doesn't coo over cats or dogs or turtles or horses or pandas... not even baby pandas!

So I asked him if there was any animal he felt an affinity for. He thought for a while, and surprised me with his reply. "Wolverine," he said. "...because they are feisty and don't back down from opponents that are bigger than they are."

what is etegami?

Etegami (e= "picture"; tegami= "letter/message") are simple drawings accompanied by a few apt words. They are usually done on postcards so that they can be easily mailed off to one's friends. Though etegami has few hard-and-fast rules, traditional tools and materials include writing brushes, sumi ink, blocks of water-soluble, mineral-based pigments called gansai, and washi postcards that have varying degrees of "bleed." They often depict some ordinary item from everyday life, especially items that bring a particular season to mind.