Happy Christmas

I wish you a wonderful Christmas!



This sketch is from the Christmas last year. I wish I was going back to Cambridge for Christmas! The three Christmases I had in England were all gorgeous memories.
I can not find any of those Christmasy things like the real spruce tree or Christmas pudding, panattoni, mince pies, stilton, crackers with paper crowns or a big Father Christmas chocolate here in Japan. But I insisted on buying brussel sprouts, at least!
イギリスの家では、とても良い匂いのする、本物のドイツトウヒの木を飾った。キャンドルには本当に火も入れた。もちろんツリーの前でくつろいでいる間だけだが。



This year, I was in Christmas mood as early as the last day of May. Because that day I received an e-mail with the subject "Happy Christmas." It was from the editor of the Atlantis verlag in Switzerland offering a book deal for my Christmas story which I showed in Bologna. I am still working on it but almost there to finish the actual artworks! So it is indeed a very happy Christmas for me. The book should be out sometime in late summer next year.

Watarase Resevoir

I had a wonderful day at Watarase Resevoir even though it was drizzling all the time. Utaka Godo, a wildlife artist and I have been planing to make some opportunities to sketch birds, wildlife and nature landscape with other "sketchers." I am dreaming of having the Seabird Drawing Course in Japan! And this was the very first step. We sketched together!  



This resevoir in the middle of Tochigi, Ibaraki, Saitama and Gunma prefecture, was created to purify the water by precipitating the mineral poison from the Ashio Copper Mine, which caused a big pollution in the late 19th century. It now has huge reed beds and some eastern marsh harriers and hen harriers roost there. In fact we had fantastic close up sights of hen harriers, Mr. & Ms. Grey!
Last year, this place was listed on the The Ramsar List of Wetlands of International Importance. As I studied the Ramsar sites, I learned that almost all the nature reserves in the UK are on the list! Splendid!



Rain drops (not snow flakes as it was forecasted) fell on the left part of this painting because I was drawing it on the passenger seat and the window was open. It was that wet. But because of that, the trees in the mere were all in dark colour and looked characteristic.



And since it was a rainy weekday, nobody was there to watch birds. The path was turning into public baths! There were large number of rustic buntings, quite a lot of oriental greenfinches, black-faced buntings, azure-winged magpies, a long-tailed rosefinch came to take a bath! An oriental turtle dove and a Japanese pheasant were walking by.



猛禽類の形をとるのが苦手なんですよと話したら、ノスリを見つけるたびに、車を止めてスケッチさせてくださった。どんな鳥でも、何度も何度もスケッチしていくうちに、形や動きが頭に入ってきて、自然に形がとれるようになってくる。



Eastern Buzzard
一人でスケッチしに行くのも気楽でいいけれど、仲間がいると刺激が多い。スケッチの仕方、何を描くか、何で描くか、どう描くかは人によって本当に様々で、それを横で見ているだけでも勉強になる。次回はぜひ、ゆっくりスケッチブック見せあいっこ時間をとりたい！



ノスリ克服中！　



帰りの羽生サービスエリアでハクセキレイのねぐら入りを見た。どこからともなく湧いてきたハクセキレイは、まず上が平たく、背の高い大型トラックの屋根の上にとまり、辺りを見回してから一本だけある常緑の木に飛び込んでいく。4時40分頃だった。
そこに停車している大型トラックは毎日違うだろうに、あまり気にしていないようだ。

Christmas Cormorant Count

Last Sunday was CCC (Christmas Cormorant Count), an event to follow the movements of the cormorants, which leave their colony in Gyotoku early in the morning. 40 of us spread around the area and stood at the beaches or on the bridges along the rivers, where we could see cormorants flying, and recorded their movement, number and time that we watched from 6-9 in the morning. While researching, we each could only see what we saw from the certain place. But later, when we combined the results, we could follow some big flocks of cormorants, where they flew to and landed on water to feed.
This was something like its tenth year or more (depending on which year to count for the beginning) and this annual event is becoming an established one. Even I joined it six times since 2006! It's a wonderful event for students and local bird watchers to step in the world of researching birds.



After the research in the morning, there were several more events to follow. But I skipped some and drew birds from the Gyotoku Bird Observatory. This reserve is one of very few reserves in Japan which has chairs and desks to sit and watch birds. It's nice to have them for drawing purpose!



The grey heron in the dusk.



A grey heron caught a huge flat fish and tried to gulp it down. But he couldn't. The fish was too big. He dropped it, picked it and tried to gulp it several times... but he couldn't! He brought the fish on to a bank and tried it again there... but he couldn't!! It seems that he really didn't manage this time. Silly Heron!



A study of the black-headed gulls.



I even did some "colour studies" inspired by Turner!



There was a Christmas party in the evening. The great thing about this event was that many people from different background, including research specialists, conservationists and famous artists, joined and we could talk to each other like longtime friends.

不忍池

丸一日、上野で過ごした。 昼過ぎまではスケッチブックをかかえて不忍池でカモを描き、日が傾いてからターナー展とエドヴァルド・ムンク版画展。たまには刺激のある日も重要だ。



Shoveler at the Shinobazu Pond. This pond with lotuses is in the middle of Tokyo but always has several kinds of ducks in winter and we can see them right in front of us.



It was very difficult to paint this scenery with many dead lotus stems and leaves, ducks in the water. The more I worked on the more it got muddy!



There is someone feeding sparrows regularly by the pond. So sparrows (I found that quite a lot of them were young one) were very tame. This one came near me as close as 30-50 cm as I was sitting quietly and drawing ducks.



Pintail is one of the commonest ducks in winter here.

In the late afternoon, I went in two museums to see the special exhibition of Turner and the prints of Munch. The Turner was fantastic! There were a lot of sketches (including some in his sketchbooks) and colour studies as well as finished paintings. I love looking at those unfinished works or study works because I feel that I could somehow see the secret of making the amazing pieces. And a lot of subjects he drew were familiar British sceneries and those in Venice. Oh, how I miss those beautiful places!
The small exhibition of Munch's prints was also interesting. There was a series of prints from his story Alpha & Omega inspired from the story of Adam and Eve. His strong lines and posture of people are so beautiful! I learned that Gil Shohat made an opera out of the series in Hebrew. Interesting!

YBIRD通信

For almost the whole month of November, I was working on designing and making this leaflet and brochure for the YBIRD travel agency. The brochure has 20 pages and includes all the tour advertisements as well as some articles written by the bird guides. I wouldn't have been able to do it if I haven't leaned all the techniques on Photoshop and In Design from my classmates. Thank you!



I made this cover image with two layers of monoprint and a layer of lino. Monoprint was much fun!
バードウォッチング専門の旅行会社、ワイバードのパンフレット「ワイバード通信」のデザイン、制作をやらせていただいた。中のページも無機質にならないように、いろいろなマークを判子や手書きのイラストで作ってみた。機会があれば、ぜひお手にとって楽しそうなツアーに思いを馳せてください。

When the print came out, I immediately realised that the back ground colour is slightly different from page to page... it's always this way! When something comes out from the printer, I find mistakes that I couldn't find during my count less number of checking! It's very frustrating! Well, it is almost impossible to make a perfect data without a colour proof... isn't it?

三角帽子

It was windy but a lovely day. I finally felt that It's nice to be back in Japan. Because I finally started something that I wanted to do since I came back... sketch Japanese birds and scenery!



I visited this place with my friends to watch lapwings the other day and found this fabulous scenery of paddy field with little triangle haystacks. The mountain is so close! I couldn't help going back with my paint box.





Lapwing, the bird I could see in almost every nature reserve in East Anglia, is a scarce winter visitor in my area. It has reduced its number because their habitat, rice paddy has decreased. I heard that this place is one of a few places where we can still see more than a dozen of them in the area.  



三角帽子の絵を描きにもう一度行きたいんですけれど・・・と突然言い出したわたしを、ヤマセミさんがお忙しい中、時間を見つけて駅から田んぼまで送り迎えしてくださり、半日、大山を目の前にする田んぼで絵を描くという贅沢な機会を得た。こうしてちょっとずつ日本の風景を描きためていきたい。
ヤマセミさん、お世話になりました！

Autumnal colour

It is getting chilly and leaves are turning red and yellow in my area. The landscape is shouting "it's autumn!!"



Mandarin duck
「オシドリは遠すぎて、だめですね」　大砲のようなカメラを抱えた人たちは、ちらりと双眼鏡をのぞいてそう言っては、諦めて別の鳥を探して移動していく。
宮ヶ瀬のオシドリはシャイで、岸部近くの湖面に張りだした枝の下を静かに泳いでいる。湖の対岸から望遠鏡を向けても、こちらを気にしてさらに枝の奥へと入っていくように感じるほどだ。でも、そんな野生のオシドリらしいオシドリが見られるのは、とてもすばらしいことだと思う。



Daurian Redstart, one of the commonest, cute winter birds in Japan. Somehow they are quite tame and stay at a same spot for long time so I often get enough time to sketch them.



赤いカラスウリ、みつけた！
This morning, I went out just after the sun rise and visited a very small valley with a small pond a few kilometers away from my house. This small natural area is hidden in between the apartments and the golf courses and I don't think not many people, who lives in this area, have even realised that it is there. But I found that a kingfisher often visits this small, shallow pond! Wildlife know where to go in this built-up area.



Grasses were also in bright yellow and in between them there were goldenrods.



I missed those Acer trees in autumn in England. Autumn needs this red colour!



Japanese Grosbeaks. This sketch is actually from a few weeks ago, when I visited Yamanashi. Birds were feeding on the remaining Dogwood's fruits. The grosbeak crushes seeds so the tree won't be happy having them eating up the seeds...

大磯宿場まつり

少し前になるが、ジャパン・バード・フェスティバル、大磯宿場まつりと秋のにわか露天商が今年も無事に終わった。お祭りの屋台の食べ物、おもちゃを見ると、日本だな！と感じる。自分がブースにいるとまったく他をまわったり、スケッチする時間がないのだが、宿場まつりでこまたんの「あおばとや」の目の前には屋台があったので、店番をしながらスケッチ。日本に帰ってきて以来、ちょっとしたプラスアルファのことをする時間がどうもない！



Banana Chocolate, a typical street sweet at festivals in Japan. They dip the whole banana on a stick into melted chocolate and let it dry, put some decorations. Those venders are very good at judging how many they can sell until the end of the festival and stop making them. There were nearly ten bananas left when they started clearing up a few minutes before the closing time. And they were all sold one by one just in time for the finish time!



Super balls (bouncy balls) dipping is kids' favorite! (I know that the perspective is not right at all in this sketch! I started to drew the child and the lady completely separately in the beginning...)
ワイバードブース、日本ワイルドライフアート協会、こまたんのみなさま、お世話になりました！　たくさんの方がブース、店に立ち寄って、声をかけてくださり、とてもうれしかったです。ありがとうございました！

Happy Halloween!

Missing my friends from Cambridge, I had to do something for Halloween! Every year, we carved at least a pumpkin, decorated our house, ate some butternut squashes and roasted pumpkin seeds. So here they are! My jack-o'-lanterns for this year!! The Spectrum sprit is still alive here!



ハロウィーンのきびだんごランタン



Since the huge orange pumpkin for the lantern is not common in Japan and the big kabocha squash which we normally see in the super market is rather hard to carve. So I decided to get a small one intending to make a small but proper jack-o'-lantern. But I became busy and... hungry. So it turned out to be Sankaya Fakton, the Thai pumpkin custard pudding instead! It was quite easy and it was yummy! Better to be delicious than just beautiful!

Shrikes and persimmons

While I was stuck at home working, autumn had finally arrived here. For the last two days I managed to go out with my sketchbooks for an hour or two! It was lovely to be out in the fresh air!



柿とモズ、近所の秋の風景。
There are several orchards around my area and now they are all in orange with persimmon fruits.



This female brown-headed shrike decided to take this orchard as her winter home. From morning till the evening, she is singing aloud at the top of trees claiming her territory.



棚を整理したら、農工大を卒業時に美術部の後輩からもらった水彩用のスケッチブックを見つけ、いまさらながらではあるが使いはじめた。良い紙のスケッチブックは、高いからなかなか買えないけれど、やっぱり発色がよいのでうれしい！　美術部のみんなありがとう！



近所の遊水池を多い茂っているセイタカアワダチソウの中にもモズがいた。
I also visited a small river near my house, flowing right behind a bread factory. I used to go there often to watch birds when I was in the junior high school and the high school. While I was sketching this shrike in the field of goldenrods, I suddenly felt nostalgic. It was the smell from the bread factory! Unconsciously, I must had been sniffing the bread whenever I was there!



Kingfisher (female) is always a star. But today, I was more happy to spot a daurian redstart for the first time this season!



道路を歩いていて、母に連れて来られたナミアゲハ。