I painted this commission many weeks ago but haven’t been able to post it until now, because it was a surprise birthday gift. A good friend came to visit me in Japan last year, and for her birthday her mom asked me to paint a memory of her Japan trip. The background in this painting is Tojimbo, one of my favorite places here (you can see those same cliffs in a number of my paintings, including the Umibozu). The sky and water patterns are borrowed from Hokusai’s Great Wave over Kanagawa, one of the most famous Japanese images. The painting is acrylic on Japanese washi paper board.
My wife and I will be going back to Takefu, to her parents’ house, for a traditional Japanese New Year’s. I spent New Year’s there back before we were dating and had a great time, so I’m looking forward to it again very much this year. And we’re expecting to have a huge snowstorm that night too, which will be fun.
Expect lots of new things here in January! Going back to the A-Yokai-A-Day theme, I’ll be working on another series of paintings of Japanese kami, or gods. I won’t be doing one a day — I have a lot of things to juggle right now, so I can’t devote 100% of my time to a single project — but I’m aiming for 4 to 5 per week. These will also be painted in acrylics and gouache on shikishi like the yokai, and will also be available for purchase as originals or prints. So please check back here soon after the new year rolls in! And have a safe and fun New Year’s holiday!
woot! i get last painting of the year. ma’at, this painting is so beautiful. thank you and hitomi so much for the inscription on the back. i love that the red bridge to oshima island is in the background. we freaked hitomi out walking around that island in the dark, but i was more paranoid of falling off the cliffs at tojimbo. i wonder how many of those “suicides” are unintentional. i couldn’t imagine being in a kimono in that windy place! i had to tie up my overshirt just to keep it from whipping around me the stormy day we went. perhaps they have invented some sort of kimono suspenders for decency’s sake. the main other thing i wanted to say was that when looking at this painting originally, i expected to see little monkeys or a picture of you hidden somewhere in it, like when we took pictures at the purikura machines in the arcades. i look forward to framing it. thank you, ma’at. ~angel
I’m so glad you liked it! Painting it brought back a lot of fun memories of your visit, for my wife as well!
You know, I should have put a hidden picture in it. I wasn’t thinking silly at the time, so I didn’t do it. Back in school, I used to hide tons of things in my paintings… ALFs, or New Jerseys, or words… I should start doing that again.