Ten years

Happy ten years of our friendship!  

Today marks ten years from the day I went to the UK to study children's book illustration and became friends with the lovely Spectrum crews.   This is a doodle I made based on my newly published Alison Uttley's book's characters using Adobe Illustrators.  

I thought it is appropriate to ask those animals to come on board because all my experiences in Britain were put into that project.    

And yesterday, I was learning how to draw with digital paths.  I asked my illustrator friend to teach me tips on how to create paths.  I like traditional media and will still keep creating images with them.  But it is always good to be able to use digital media.  And it's a good feeling to learn something new!  

これまで見よう見まねで、必要最低限にPhotoshopやInDesignを使っていたけれど、Illustratorでパスデータを扱うのがどうしても上手くできなかった。これからも基本はアナログ技法で描いていくつもりだけれど、ロゴや布製品の入稿にはベクターデータが必要でいつも困っていたので、以前からイラレは勉強したいと思っていた。少し仕事に余裕ができたので、昨日、友人で大活躍中のイラストレーター、オオノマユミさんにお願いして個人的に教えていただいた。オンライン個人レッスン！　覚えたてのことを使って、練習もかねて、遊びで絵を描いてみた。思った通りの線が描けるようになるにはまだまだ練習が必要だけれど、何ができるかを体系的に教えていただけたのは本当に大きい。

The three years in Cambridge still holds the position of the happiest time in my life so far.  I don't mean that I am not happy now living with my super adorable little one and a very understanding husband and closer to my family.  Of course I am! 

But that is a different kind of happiness.

Living in that beautiful place and having the freedom of doing anything I want to do on the day and being excited about everything new happening to me were something so special.    

 Not only my life had changed but also the world had changed so much since then.   Sometimes, I get scared thinking, do I ever have a month or even a week when I get up everyday so excited about the day ahead like I was in those three years?  But maybe I should be grateful that I at least had those three years.  I worry about my little one and children in her generation if they ever have a chance to study abroad like I did.    

 Three million cheers to our days of chatting over endress cups of  tea and coffee.