brain

(click the image to view close up)

the japanese says “suteki na nomiso”, which means “lovely brain”.

i used a sheet of black paper. i’ve never used black paper before. it was a lot of work to color with color pencils alone, but i kind of like this ambiance.

11 x 14″

finally, my GALLERY is up-to-date!

this is second version of my gallery page. the first one was based on my flickr images, but it didn’t work well so i had to remove it after my site got linked from metafilter.

this new version of my gallery is based on the open source singapore image gallery. paul did the work to set it up and design it to match with my blog and shop. it looks nice and clean, and it’s easy to use.

i put up many different image galleries. there’s a collection of my favorite drawings and collections from different seasons. you can watch my style change over time, because i can never stick with one thing for very long. there are also slideshows where you can view a group of my drawings (start the slideshow of my favorite drawings).

putting my new gallery together, i found lots of drawings in my messy files that i haven’t shown yet on this blog. some of them are quite embarrassing, but now that i’m going to be a mama, i can’t be shy anymore…

older drawings from my gallery

first, really really early and really really embarrassing. this is a drawing i did with markers and color pencils back in kyoto in 1999. the japanese text says “the real me is…”. this was my best effort in shading.

that one was popular with young people but old people looked so concerned about my future.

next, something i did in 2004. i showed this with my “loud silence” photographs and useless toys at the women’s art festival in kingston, ontario — my first-ever show.

you can really see the “Action” of the New Me’s. i used this same idea a couple more times to do drawings of heads coming out of me. my mind really is everywhere.

from the same time, this drawing is still one that i like a lot. it’s my secret love-love feeling.

that was drawn with markers (and acrylic paint to decorate the edges) in about 10 minutes. can’t believe i’m showing it to so many people…

my first real show in kingston was at the sleepless goat cafe, in december 2004. i decided i should try to draw something bigger for the first time ever. i did most of the drawings and paintings for the show in about 2 and a half weeks. this was done with color pencils and ballpoint pen.

the title is “zukyuun”, which is a japanese sound effect for an explosion/blasting sound. lots of my drawings from this time have rabbits in them, or fish, or both. arts people (with degrees in fine arts) would ask me about the symbolism of the rabbits and fish. there was no symbolism, i just like drawing rabbits and fish.

here’s another one from the same show, with “rabbit-ojisan”, a middle-aged man wearing a rabbit mask. i always think of men like this to be a little sad but kind.

after that show, i didn’t do much drawing for awhile. in 2005, i did only 3 larger drawings (calcium keeps me calm, i told you, and since the first moment). most of the drawings i did were little doodles on scraps of paper, like this one.

i did a few small drawings in the fall of 2005 when i first came to saskatoon. the sushi shop where i was waitressing asked me to put up some artwork, after seeing my drawings at the fringe festival. this one is called “supper is here”.

all along, i was doing drawings on construction paper. i like construction paper because it’s colorful. here are two i drew more recently, in 2006:

i like to put these construction paper drawings in my online SHOP. the top one, “thank you rabbit”, sold to someone in california. the bottom one, “je suis vide“, is for sale now.

eventually, i got my first show in a gallery, the royal red gallery at phonographique in saskatoon. i had very little to show, so i had to draw like crazy to get ready. a lot of my favorite drawings were done in the month before that show, including my self portrait and chicken fight.

one of my silliest drawings was also from that time, which is based on a painting i did back in 2003 or so. that painting is way, way too embarrassing to show here, so this will be the end of my shameful (”hazukashii~~”) look back at my gallery. time to “hit the beach”.

“i want to eat the strawberry… and trout.”

「イチゴ、たべたいけど…　マスも…」

a brain can’t do what it wants by itself, not even when it’s standing on artificial legs.

i drew this a couple weeks ago.

(click to view close up)

freshly drawn this afternoon. it’s been awhile since i’ve drawn in vivid colours. i think i’m liking it.

the kanji on the milk carton says yuki-jirushi, which means snow brand. that’s a japanese milk company that got into huge trouble a few years ago when many people around osaka got food poisoning from their low fat milk. paul was one of the first cases. interestingly, paul and i both drank from the same milk carton that day, but only paul got food-poisoning. he was really sick. later on, two men from the milk company came to the door of our apartment and apologized. they bowed very deeply and gave us a box of expensive japanese sweets. i felt bad that these two men had to apologize even though they didn’t do anything wrong.

the case was a big scandal in japan. 14,780 people got sick. you can read more about it here.

my drawing has nothing to do with the food poisoning scandal. i just like the design of the milk carton, and i’m used to since we always used to drink snow brand milk (before). my brain is very weak, like 0.1% milk.

today i feel like a banana.

(sold)