So first a little background. I’ve always enjoyed doing illustration, but haven’t spent as much time in painting mediums, such as watercolors. I was first introduced to it back in high school, when I was taking art classes from Tim Donohoe, but then was unable to pursue it as much during college and so kinda fell out of the habit. Earlier this year however, I started to get heavily influenced by the work of Aya Takano, a popular artist based out of the Tokyo area. Her watercolors in particular had a huge impact on me, and having a slightly more flexible working schedule than some, I decided to break out my old watercolor supplies (thank goodness I had the good sense to bring all that stuff with me), and started to rediscover the joys of painting in earnest. There’s something very freeing and relaxed in the works of Aya that I wanted to translate into my own art. I had been getting a bit frustrated with my own lack or real training, and seeing something like this that emphasized feeling and form over technical prowess really helped me to branch out and try new things. Her choice of subject matter was also a big source of inspiration, and really helped to challenge my own creativity in exploring new themes and topics that I had never really addressed before. As of right now, I’ve only been seriously re-pursuing my art since about April. It’s been absolutely wonderful though getting back into it again, and having a job that accommodates that is a true blessing, and one I hope to take full advantage of.

The second of the two pieces in particular is one of my favorites from the stuff I’ve been doing, and is part of a series that explores movement and the human body in unconventional and interesting ways. There seems to be no real purpose in the subject’s movement, and yet there almost seems to be a driving force behind her actions. It’s not just movement for the sake of motion, but an underlining purpose of action that we can perhaps relate to as well in our own daily routines.

If you like the pieces at all, I’ll also be putting up larger versions of them up over on my flickr site, so please check them out there as well.

Thanks again, and please enjoy!

Nothing truly monumental has occurred since my last post, but there certainly has been some highlights, which I’ll quickly go over before heading on to the main bit; that which is to come. May brought with it the many promises of Golden Week, a more-or-less week long obligatory fiesta here in Japan, and originally had plans to spend it basking in the sun of a foreign(er) land, like perhaps Thailand or something. Unfortunately this dream was shattered when it became obvious that I was fighting out this dream spot with about 130 million other travel hungry people, all of whom it turn out are better planners than me. Boo-hoo. So then I decided to set my sights lower, and do some traveling in Japan, but then I discovered that the 125 million people who also couldn’t make it out of Japan had already gone that route, which pretty much left me with three options: swim it, walk it, or stay put. I went with the third choice (see how exciting this post is becoming already??). This did however give me the excuse to check out some fun things in Tokyo which I hadn’t really had the time to before. This included checking out several art museums, the new Tokyo Midtown shopping and design project, and visiting my good friends Alex and Aya out in Ibaraki (the next prefecture over. And yes, luckily he drives. Yay!). Not the ultimate way to spend ones vacation, but nice nonetheless.

Some other highlights of the past couple months include:

Visiting Tokyo Disney Sea for the third time (that place is amazing! My third time, and I still found new things that I had never seen there before!!)

Seeing the really cool group Lullatone perform live in concert (at the new Tokyo Midtown no less)

Seeing Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End at my favorite movie theater in Tokyo; the Piccadilly in Yurakucho.

And, um, I think that just about covers it.

So now, thankfully, on to more exciting news!!
There’s a few things that I’m pretty excited about here. The first is that in exactly one month I’ll be getting on a plane and leaving summer behind for magic of winter! No you silly, I won’t be flying around in a plane for six months, I’m headed for Australia!!!! I’ll be visiting my very close friend Brian, his lovely wife Sarah, and their new pride and joy Alex for a week in Adelaide, before heading by myself to Sydney for a couple days. Should be an awesome time, and will be my first real traveling in almost a year. The exact dates will be July 14th through the 24th. Can’t wait!

The next big thing, which will happen pretty shortly after returning from Australia, will be the end of school term, and with it my time in Kuki. From August 1st I’ll be packing up and moving just north of here to the small town of Kurihashi. It’ll be an interesting transition, and I’ll continue to keep you updated as the process gets underway.

The last big news of the day is that yesterday, after some patient waiting, I was able to pick up my brand new Canon scanner! Aren’t you excited?? Well, you should be! I hadn’t realized before, but as I was browsing around the electronic store some weeks ago, I happened to walk by the scanner section and was quite taken aback to discover that most of the new models these days not only have the function to scan a nice, clean image (with DPI that’ll knock your socks off!), but now have the capability to scan film directly from the negatives and render them into digital images, no processing required!!!! Holy hand grenades!! What this means for you, the dedicated reader, is that at last you’ll be treated to a couple of things that until now I haven’t had the ability to share. The first, and after my lovely description probably most obvious, will be uploading of some black & white photos, as well as some slide photos, that I’ve been taking on my old camera, and of course which can be viewed on my Flickr page. The second, and hopefully more of a surprise, will be the scanning and uploading of huge number of illustrations and paintings that I’ve steadily been amassing over the past year. Thankfully all of this means, as I alluded to before, that you can indeed expect a slew of new posts over the next days and weeks. Yes, it is okay to weep for joy (ToT)/

So anyways, thanks for sticking it out with me over this odd couple of months, and please check back again soon!

My family may be on vacation, but I’m sure not! hehee