This sketching of maneki-neko, a welcoming cat, a symbol of good luck should be a nice start for my first post this year.
A little late but …
Happy New Year!
May you have good health and a prosperous year !
I got these today! Yeah yeah! They are so nice and cute, in good material too!
I talked about this club in my previous post here
Go to see my photos of Nicholas books at my beautiful books if you want!
shiawase na happa by yuko ohnari
I’m building up a collection of my-beautiful-book photos at my other flickr It has only 3 sets right now but I plan to add more. The idea is just to share my passion for book ,design and illustration. Some I have read, some on the waiting list and some in other languages that I can’t read but just want to collect. These books help me a lot whenever I get bored or depressed.
By the way, I already talked about this book here
I’m pretty slow in drawing journal. This is my first color drawing I did on November 29 and almost forgot to post it up! I did this drawing one night after finishing my usual work. We have had this lamp since we were just kids. The design is a bit traditional if compare to present lamps in the market. It’s well-designed though. I love the combination of light brown wood and dark chocolate metal work. It also says something of my childhood sitting under the lamp reading cartoons 
I’m quite sure that among things that we learned to draw as a kid, besides house, flowers or the sun etc, tree might be one of the easiest thing to draw. People can recognize it no matter how lousy your drawing is. It’s a natural connection. However, I think that tree is the most difficult subject as well. A tree has many branches, many layers and so much in detail. Each leaf even has different line patterns.
I guess that is the charm of drawing a tree.
Bruno Munari teaches us how to draw a tree with his simplest but poetic words along with beautiful illustrations in this book. I can imagine his spending long hours outside in different places, different time observing trees in different forms before he wrote the book. It must have been a precious time for him.
I really like this book. Its beautiful drawings in simple layout really inspire me to draw some more trees…outside.
Here are samples of inside pages.
My favorite bag when going out. It’s a big light blue denim made in Thailand. I didn’t quite like it at first as it looks a bit baggy. Now I love it! The bag itself doesn’t weigh much so I can put stuffs and it wouldn’t break my shoulder.
The drawing doesn’t show much but it has a nice shape and I got a lot of compliment from those who saw me carrying it:-)
I’m not ready for coloring yet so just put color in one spot. Now I wish I didn’t do it ;-(
Interested in the bag? click here Too bad they are not available in retail. I really love their design.
Last week I subscribed to a drawing group called everydaymatters.
It’s a group where people who have interest in art of drawing and journal sketching
get together and share their works. It’s quite big a group
with almost 4,000 members. Sounds intimidating but inspring at the same time when
I browse through their journals. It seems that drawing is their real job and I wish I could
have my own sketchbook full of drawings like theirs.
Not even sure if I could make it but I took the first step anyway.
After having doodled irregularly (not include sketches for my work),
I start to have a drawing journal today. A very simple subject I did in 5 minutes.
Usually, I sketch on white canson paper. This time I chose green read paper.
I had fun while drawing but a little bit disappointed with the scan. I guess I like
my drawing on white better.
However, I also like the soft touch of green read paper.
Or maybe I need to learn how to adjust color in Photoshop?
Anyway, here my first journal!
I got quite excited to see the latest book of Nicholas series, Nicholas in Trouble be out on the shelf.
I took no time to grab it and even more thrilled when I got into Nicholas’s homepage. Nice layout and a lot of fun stuff inside. If you are a fan of Nicholas’s cute illustrations, you have to click to every page, especially the Fun and Game section where you can play cowboy and golf just like you were Nicholas’s friends!
Very cool site! Also, don’t forget to join his club and wait for cute stuffs. I doubt if they will send the things cross country (it seems unbelievable) but I take a chance anyway.
They also have their own blog for news update. I remember last time I looked it’s in French. So glad that they blog in English now.
P.S. Last week I was very depressed and tried to find some good books to cheer me up but came up with nothing. Now I know which book (and web site) I would look for if such blue days visit me again
Old song, old video but still has power to refresh my sick day a little bit.
Wish I could get healthy and be out there under the warm sun soon.
My all time favorite song, Start by Depapepe.
