Spring Etagami

"Aluminum Afternoon Companion"

I sent off and received back my second installment in the Italian/Japanese Etagami exchange.
My latest attempt reads, in Japanese, "Aluminum Afternoon Companion".

In return I got from my Japanese penpal/Etagami-pal this little postcard drawing with the phrase:
"It's already Spring!"

As I wrote last month, there is a very active Japanese association of Etagami enthusiasts that create and exchange small sumi and watercolor drawings....Etagami are small, brush-painted images of daily life married to a short, written comment or poem and they are meant to be sent, or shared with others. This year (and for the first time) they've opened up to an Etagami exchange here in Florence through LAILAC, the local Japanese Cultural association that is acting locally to collect and then send off our cards and distribute them when the returns arrive from Japan. I signed up as of January and will try to draw and exchange a monthly Etagami with this group.

As I mentioned in my earlier post the somewhat childlike drawing quality is due to the technique. A calligraphy brush is used, but held vertically from the very end so just the tip of the brush touches the paper and the brush is hard to strictly control.
They are drawn on washi and the slight bleed of the uncontrolled ink and paint add to the magic and spontaneity.

Regular readers will know of my fondness for coffee and espresso (see my moka genie post: http://rospobio.blogspot.it/2009/11/moka-genie.html...) and I've two coffee-themed prints in the not-quite-past the initial stages. But this was fun to draw and I'm already looking forward to my next try. It's also a treat to be getting a new one in the mail every month as it feels like I'm receiving a little gift. Which I guess is exactly the idea.?

Continental Drift and coffee bars.

Wow. It's been five months since my last post. I meant to write, really I did but the the tectonic plate of economic upheaval collided with the quiet but unstable plate of marital politics to force me first off the unproductive and certainly nonprofitable farm/garden and then push me out of the studio and back into the world of American health care. When the tremors stopped and all was quiet I realized what was painfully obvious. I had to go back to work.
And since as I said in my job interview, It was just 8 years since I was working in the emergency room but almost 30 since I last waited tables it was probably better that I go back to sewing up lacerations and saving lives instead of bartending or serving food again. So I'm no longer an "ex-ER physician" but a part-time physician in a local, busy urgent care. It's been stressful going back and I've spent much of the last five months reviewing books, journals, current antibiotic usage and resistance patterns, ECG reviews, etc., etc. so that I'm current and up to speed at work. So, I'm back from Italy; the kids are in school again in Santa Cruz, I'm working again 2-3 shifts a week; reading and studying in my free time and just now beginning to drift back to the studio and to some printmaking. But as I started planning my next print, a narrow long format of 3 X 9 inches, my ambivalence about going back to work was pretty clear.
Here's the first idea:
I've been spattered with all sorts of body fluids during my past life as an ER physician and putting on the shirt and tie again after so many years brought that back. I figured the long format would be perfect for the necktie and that the colorful tie would be fun to print over the white shirt. The working title was "stain". But Alexander, looking over my shoulder was very clear, "Dad, that's the most boring thing you've ever done....why don't you do something interesting! No one would ever buy that!" So, I kept on sketching. (although I still think it was a good idea).
And lots of these kept popping up...

There were all sorts of bound and wrapped bundles in different shapes and sizes. Just looking at them all made me depressed.

So I went back to the sketchbook and while at Coffeetopia, a local coffee/espresso bar I doodled this:

And then this....and this:





Keep an eye out for the little gremlin in the bottom as he's about to become the main attraction.
I liked where this was going and tomorrow I'll post the final preliminary sketch and the keyblock.