afternoon watercolors

I made some sketches earlier this summer from a trip to Japan. Now I'm playing with them - adding watercolor, mostly. These were statues on the steps leading to a temple in Kyoto. They're still just in pencil, but I'd like to ink them in. 

I liked this statue of Izumo no Okuni that stands near the Kamogawa River in Kyoto. The plaque nearby said she used to perform a "Kabuki Dance" in 1603 there on the riverbank. Later, only men played parts in kabuki theater (to protect social morals) so I suppose she didn't get to dance anymore? I haven't yet captured how cute her face is. Will have to work on that. 

I added colored pencil in blues and greens and we'll see where we go from here...

There was a huge, beautiful tree. I sketched its branches and added watercolor today. Still need to paint in all the tiny leaves and sunlight.

Adding watercolor and colored pencil to the beer mugs. Now to figure out how to make them more frosty.

Not really working on finishing anything. Just jumping between pages in my sketchbook. Relaxing Saturday!

#superbOwl

The Super Bowl is on. But as I mentioned a few years ago, I kind of prefer Superb Owl.

SF MOMA has been tweeting #superbowl images of superb owl artworks in their collection, so I thought I'd add the questioning owls from my recent Sketchbook Project to the celebration of the day.

This was one of my dad's haiku poems that made me smile. I hope you'll check the sketchbook out if you're ever at the Art House Library in Brooklyn since this isn't the greatest photo and the owls actually have a bit more color and detail. (You might find them to be more superb).

The game goes on, and here I'll give a little cheer for the underdogs in this game ~ Go Broncos! :)

a new year!

Hello and Happy 2014!

I've been away so long it's almost hard to know where to start. The past year was sad and terrible. My father lost his battle with cancer and we said good bye in September. These holidays were hard without him, even though I had the love and support of all my family around me. I know I am very blessed to have many wonderful people in my life, and I count all the lovely people I've met through this blog too. 

The new year is here and I have arrived to a place where my mind and heart are a little freer and happily, I found the space to create some art again. 

My first painting for the new year is this watercolor of a quilt my grandmother made. I've always loved it, and I found it again recently when I was cleaning my dad's house. Family has been such an important part of the past year that I decided to make a painting of it since seeing it always makes me happy.

I hope that each of you have a wonderful new year surrounded by people and things that make you happy. Let's have a beautiful 2014!

watercolor bunny

After receiving Apolonia's gorgeous package of art cards she so generously sent from France I was very charmed by the rabbit she drew and painted on the envelope. Gazing at its large, expressive eyes and perfect, round proportions made me remember my own bunny pet and I was inspired to make a small portrait of my late little friend and companion, Tama-chan. (She made us all so happy but passed away unexpectedly one night in her sleep earlier this year. We were devastated for weeks.) 

I realized that finally, enough time had passed that I felt I could create a little portrait of her to see every day and recall her sweet and spunky nature. It had been a while since I had painted with watercolors but everything returned very naturally and I'm happy with the result.

So I have to thank Apolonia, her giveaway contest and her kind emails for getting me back to painting again. Life has been throwing so many things in the way of my creative time that I feel quite buoyed to have started and finished this little work. This was an unexpected 'extra' gift to the giveaway ~ thank you!

mineral pigments

The local art store recently started carrying Daniel Smith watercolors, so I went to their "testing day" to try out some of the new colors. Most of my watercolor paints are Daniel Smith brand, which I like because their pigment is very intense and a little goes a long way with very reliable color. One of the things I was most interested to see was the mineral and rock display that the rep brought along. As you can see above, it wasn't the most organized collection but it was quite interesting nevertheless.

Here's a fuchsite mineral with a wash of the watercolor made from it.

This one is rhodonite - mineral and watercolor.

Rhodonite makes a good color to paint something like these roses, perhaps. (Slipping in another garden pic here!) :)

I enjoyed finding the paint that matched the mineral sample, but it wasn't easy to do since there were tubes scattered everywhere. I really thought the gems were beautiful and interesting since they weren't cut or polished.

Here are some of the colors I checked out. I didn't photograph it, but one of the new colors that I liked best was interference gold. It looked very pretty layered on top of a color, adding depth and sparkle at the same time.

hello again

I've finally emerged from a winter hibernation and with the new year already in full swing, I'm ready for a fresh start. But first, I must catch up with the many enjoyable tasks that fell by the wayside while I was reeling from the dismaying clobbering that 2012 gave me. I can only hope those who have been waiting for these projects will forgive my delays; meanwhile, I intend to take the remaining ones up, one by one, until I'm all caught up and ready for entirely new things this (hopefully more gentle) year.

So, an embarrassing number of months later, I'm mailing off the little accordion art book collaboration started by Valeria Poropat in Rome. After the book traveled around Europe, the U.S. and Canada, Jeannine Saylor sent it to me last summer for me to add my page, which I did... eventually. 

I was inspired by a quietly alert deer that I met near Pismo Beach in the woods behind our house. I first noticed the very fresh deer droppings I'd nearly stepped in, then looked up to see huge, soft brown eyes staring at me. It was early in the morning and no one else was awake, just the two of us under the oaks on a quiet hillside. The moment stayed with me, so I added it to this thoughtful collection. Here you can see the work contributed by the other artists:

Valeria Poropat, Tatjana Odovic, Jules Young, Anika Starmer

Lisa Grabenstetter, Jessica Gowling, Jeannine Saylor, Kimi Kobashi

I'm sending the book on to the poetic Thuraya Lynn in Kuwait, who I imagine will add some mysterious black-and-white drawings of sly characters making mischief in their own worlds... we shall see if my guess is close or not!

In the meantime, I wish you all much peace, satisfaction and creativity this bright new year...

xo kimi

a bee book

After completing my Art House sketchbook for 2012 and sending it off, I signed up for the Limited Edition project as there were a few openings left, a few months to work within, and a few friends that I knew had also joined in (to make it more fun).

The Limited Edition project differs from the annual Sketchbook Project in that the books do not go on tour, but at least one image from each book will be published in a set of books about the collaboration. I sent my book off to New York the other day to join the others in Brooklyn and I just posted the scans of my pages on flickr:

My Limited Edition Sketchbook Project on flickr.

I wished to share the pages as I created them, but had so much going on I ended up just feeling lucky to have the time to finish the book at all. So, here they are ~ all in one go. Please take a look and let me know what you think! Thanks!

moustache for movember

When I saw that Creaturemag was putting out a call for moustachioed creatures, I couldn't resist giving it a try. I submitted my moustache tree a few days ago and was happy to see him appear in  Part 6 of the Moustache Illustration Awards along with numerous other entertaining moustache-folk.

It's all to promote Movember, a face-grown and hand-brushed charity event that makes November moustache-growing season to raise awareness of men's health issues (cancer in particular).

They've just extended the deadline to Monday, November 28th, so why not sketch a moustache critter and send it their way? All entries will be judged by: Matt Witt of Creaturemag, Lee Rubenstein of Eat Sleep Draw, Siobhan Leddy of Flamingo Magazine and Jon Cockley of Handsome Frank.

Details are here. Give it a try! It's for a good cause and it's a great excuse to let your imagination go stache-wild!

thank you juriko!

A little update to the story of my personal desk illustration from Juriko ~ I'll share with you the photo I ended up sending to her. I had to take one at night because of all the reflections on the desk from the sunlight coming in the windows. 

She took the time to turn it into one of her beautiful drawings, making it light and bright and adding little touches of color here and there, softly showing just a few select reflections in the glass. I admire her work so much. 

Please go see my desk as interpreted by Juriko on her blog here!

Some of Juriko's other paintings and works are in her online gallery here.

And... if you missed it before, you might also like the collection of her work I posted earlier this year. I always find there's something honest about her work that resonates with me.

I'm very excited because she gave me permission to print off her drawing so I can frame it to hang near the window. Thank you, Juri!

mix tape traveling journal

Some months ago Jessica Mack (aka @brownpaperbunny) of Canberra, Australia asked if anyone wanted to join in on a traveling journal. I signed up, waited patiently, and one day in August the book arrived to me. Now I can share the story of my turn...

Each artist gets to fill out two double-page spreads with simple rules: at least one line must be carried over from the previous page into the new one and the theme is: blue.

Jessica's beginning.

I'd seen Jessica's initial drawings on her blog when she gave the book its start and the artwork was even more charming in person. Since that time, three more artists had drawn in the book, making eight images total to fold out on the accordion pages.

Helen's pages

Helen had sent me the book from Thorndale, Pennsylvania and her pages seemed to echo Jessica's initial art. Both had a city view followed by a countryside scene and were done mostly with ink and colored pens. Two other artists' works sat between them. (I'm showing you a bit of the pages they connect to in the photos as I think it's interesting to see the lines and shapes the artists chose to continue on to their page).

Sara's dark blue

Sara Carns of Phoenix, Arizona had very intriguing pages with layers of pattern, design, gesso, paint, ink, stamps and embellishments. Her first page accented twitter (where the project originated) and the second page addressed the "mix tape" theme of music ~ hence the lyrics from Dark Blue by Jack's Mannequin ~ which is a pretty excellent band to choose, not just for the blue-themed song but also because The Mixed Tape is another song on the Everything in Transit album. This mix tape book is definitely in transit, so that was simply brilliant on her part!

Liz's pages are so pretty and bright. You can tell she designs greeting cards!

Sara's work connected to the perfect penmanship and dainty decorations of Elizabeth Caldwell. I'd seen many of her designs that she shared on twitter or her blog, so it was a little thrill to see her familiar style there on the page. She carried a bit of the tweeting theme along, too, tying it to a cute children's song that I knew because I once taught it to a group of five-year olds for a spring choir performance. It brought me right back to theie little voices warbling as they shook their clappers in time and two girls clanged tiny cymbals as accent notes. Kids are so sweet. One of her little birds is even wearing over-sized heels, like when you're little and you try on your mom's shoes. That's incredibly cute in my book.

So, I oooh'ed and aaah'ed over all the completed pages, and then it was my turn. I had some ideas but didn't know immediately how to begin. I scribbled on a notepad:

having the blues

singing the blues

blue suede shoes

blue monday

blue skies

blue is the sky when I'm without you

ocean blue

blue whale

blue agave

bluefin tuna

A picture began forming in my mind of friends at sea, in a boat at night, playing music. A little sweet, a little familiar, with a bit of that magical storybook feeling. {I hoped, anyway, that it would turn out like that.} When I studied the lines that Helen had left for me to connect to, I was very pleased that she'd been so generous as to give me the lines of two leaves in addition to the basic horizon. Looking at how they would continue out, it was almost immediately clear that on my side of the page the leaves could only transform into a flying gull. And so it came to be.

The night sky demanded a full moon and as I started drawing the mast of the boat I recalled that the Italian word for mast is albero which also means tree. Soon, branches were growing and the sail became a living one with leaves.

My blue vision.

Since the next spread was also mine, I liked the idea of having a less marked delineation and just sort of 'spilling' onto the next scene ~ totally appropriate since it was almost all water and I wanted to move on to a water creature I'm quite fond of, the blue whale. I have a soft spot for whales and the blue whale in particular. They're magnificent and swim most of the world's oceans but can be found along the California coast quite often. They're the biggest animals in the world and the loudest. They can hear for 1,000 miles and their newborns weigh 3 tons! They live 80 - 100 years unless attacked by sharks or injured by large ships. Unfortunately, they're also endangered. I used pencil and watercolor to express my admiration for these beautiful krill-eaters.

Now I'm working on my artist card to add to the mix's back pocket and then I'll send it off. I'm sorry to see it go as I've gotten rather attached to it! But it will be fun to see what the next artists come up with.

By September 1st, I'll send the book off to Sue in Maryland, after which it will pass along to three dear friends of mine ~ Jessica Gowling in Canada, Thuraya Lynn in Kuwait and Juri Kosaka in Tokyo. Another stop in Australia to comic artist Lisa McDonald and then it'll be back to Jessica once more. Can't wait to see the songs and blues they add to its pages and read the continuing adventures of the traveling mix tape!

65

Our road trip has been so exciting as we traveled the northern route across the United States through the desert, the Rockies and the Bighorn mountains, the high plains, the Black Hills, the Badlands and cultivated farmland. At last we reached the Mississippi River and there on the other side we found my aunts and uncle, cousins and all kinds of cousins several times removed, second cousins and other relatives. We'd all gotten together for my aunt and uncle's 65th wedding anniversary. Pretty amazing!

Couldn't find a 65th Anniversary card, so I made this one.
No scanner on the road, though... it actually isn't so antiqued.

My uncle joked that they never had a fight - when she would lay into him after he did something wrong he would say, "Yup! You're right. I did it!" and that would be that. They worked long hours together side by side for many years farming the land and milking cows every day at 4 a.m. and 4 p.m. They had five children and now so many grandchildren and great-grandchildren that I've lost count.

It seems to have been a good recipe for a long marriage. They were still looking very happy together after all these years. Now we're driving west again, taking a more southern route back to California. We're in Nebraska now, a long day's drive away from all my relatives and there's a sadness hanging around me. I'm really sorry to leave them all behind so soon and as some of my aunts and uncles are now in their late 80's I worry a little that I might not see them again.

We brought them a bottle of wine from the Custer State Park that had a picture of the State Game Lodge on it, which is where we stayed in the Black Hills of South Dakota and I put the "card" in a leather frame. Wishing a very Happy 65th Anniversary to my Uncle Marvin and Aunt Anita!

colors of spring

Outside my window everything is growing. Grape vines are climbing, wisteria are blooming, trees are sprouting tiny bright-green leaves and of course, there are weeds poking up that have to be plucked. Color is popping up everywhere and I long for a vacation week to sit around painting and making art from all this inspiration.

This past week was a bit rough with lots of work and overtime and deadlines. Not that it wasn't fun ~ it culminated in a very charming day of art and culture at the school where I work ~ but my own creative energy was a bit drained by the time I got home. I just wanted to go to bed!

As a result, I don't have anything new to share with you this weekend. *sigh* But I found these watercolor flowers from the archives that I thought to share with you. They reflect the colors of spring that I'm starting to see around me.

Hope you're enjoying a good weekend and that the new week brings more time for art and dreaming.

Oh ~ one more thing! A twitter friend @jojoebi in Japan is holding a bracelet/necklace raffle on her blog that is open to anyone that donates to Japan Relief. The raffle ends tomorrow, so please visit her site and enter today!


Happy Weekend!

for writing home ♡

Tried my hand at making fill-in-the-blank note cards today. I was a bit rushed on this project, but they were well received and seem like they'll be useful, so I'm pretty pleased. ^_^

My colleague's 19 year-old daughter is leaving home tomorrow to begin her independent life in a new city where she'll study music, dance and theater. Her mother was proud but a little distraught that her "baby" was leaving the nest. She held an impromptu going-away party this evening, so I quickly made this card set for a gift.

Naturally they'll call, email, text and communicate with all the modern methods we have today. But the note cards will be a personal item in her own handwriting that I hope will bring happiness to her family's mailbox. (I deliberately neglected to put any space for writing bad news or disappointment on the card. They're *just* for sending good news and cheer!)

The daughter is a very cheerful, bubbly and outgoing girl, so I wrote the prompts on the cards to reflect that. I was also thinking about what her mom might want to know: who her friends are, how she's spending her time, how things are going ... even what she's eating! I added some music and art prompts on the card too, since these subjects are such a big part of her personality.

I gave them to her with a tiny bouquet of colorful paper flowers. Each card fits perfectly in a pretty little envelope upon which I placed a Forever stamp (since I hear rates are rising in April).

My idea is that it will be easy to jot a few updating tidbits on a card, seal it up and send to whomever she wishes. Although they started out as postcards, I'm glad I decided to give them envelopes ~ if she gets inspired to write more, it will be easy to mail everything together.

I wish her good luck in her new adventure!

what he did

his silent action

This story touched my heart, too. Thank you @s_hayatsuki for sharing it and thank you Aya Watanabe  @vida_es_bella for the translation.

a little boy was standing in line

I'm really touched by the generosity and altruism characteristic of so many of the stories I read coming from Japanese twitter posts. In the face of horrendous crisis, individuals (even children) are not just thinking of their own well-being. I keep reading story after story of strangers helping each other and people staying calm even when stretched to the limit.

This tweet (above) from @makiwi was the first one that I decided to illustrate. There are so many beautiful sentiments being expressed on twitter alone that I will have a lot of drawings to do if I want to acknowledge each one that moves me. But I will do my best.

Thank you, Japan, for showing us how to be civil and noble under pressure.

spring anticipation

A storm came through, leaving a crown of snow on the mountains around our valley. Now we have a little respite of sunshine before the next rain blows through. The meteorologist tells me to expect a wet weekend so until then, I'm happily donning my skirts, light sweaters and more delicate shoes that can't abide puddles. And out of my ink pen and brush are coming thoughts and images of springtime: flowers and dresses and balmy breezes!

Wishing for a fashion garden that sprouts
shoes, sandals, handbags & dresses!

express to: canada

It was time for me to send something back to Jessica Gowling after receiving the mailbox goodness she sent to me. A little collection of art bits gathered to hop in her package.

Water color envelope with happy contents.

I had to use a little box because of the secret agent man that wanted to go along. He's one of those romantic types with an old fashioned style. Also had to send a little cityscape along with him, since he's used to skyscrapers and city bustle. It folds out and stands up so he can always feel at home.

Carved a J on top and a heart below so he could also be a stamp.

The travel time was much longer than I thought. After one week passed, I was a little anxious. Happily, I recently heard that everything arrived safely. This is my first mail art exchange and first attempt at stamp making. I liked the way the need to create an art gift got me to try some new things.

sketchbook project progress ~ {part 4}

My sketchbook is starting to have its own personality, which is exciting, but also belated since it's due in less than two weeks. I've so many ideas for the direction it's taking me ~ just need more time to spend in its company! Here are some snapshots of the pages I've finished (wish I could show you their true, bright colors):

And one page-spread that is still in progress... I must still deepen the water, add a school of fish, more sea creatures, and lights sparkling on the water.

Every other double-page spread will follow a story that has inked lines and color. In between those there is pencil work with notes and sketches of the day or thoughts about the overall progress of the book. The reason for this layout is because the ink shows through the back of the page, so I can't really keep inking in sequence. It annoyed me at first, but now I think it's more interesting.

I need to keep pushing along... some of my Sketchbook Project friends have already submitted their books, like @juriko in Japan. @jessicagowling is also very close to being done. I'm motivated ~ I know I can do it!