back to books

After a little 3D diversion, I am back on track trying to catch up on my book a month project I set myself at the start of the year. This will be my 10th book (which includes a couple of zines I posted recently). I started this book ages ago after a trip to Japan and discovered it when tidying up, with lots of work to do before being able to say "finished".
We had been in Japan during their autumn to see the changing colours of the leaves. We were not disappointed but the beauty was too much for me to try to use in my books. So "red leaves" is not about the leaves, but the experience of getting to see the leaves. 

The mixed media images use :
acrylic paint, gesso, wax pigment,stamped letters collage from maps, white ink, chinagraph pencil and linseed oil on Kraft paper. The very fine spider web like lines were made with a Japanese Pilot,  Hi-Tec-C 0.25 .

the journey continues - (stamping in Japan)

On previous travels in Japan, I had noticed that local travellers love to collect ink stamps from all interesting sites and collect them in a little paper book. These are usually quite large rubber stamps in bright colours mainly red but also in other colours including blue, purple, green and black. 

On our  journey to Japan last year I decided to collect some of these myself and combine them with my other images in my travel diary. We found the stamps everywhere, they even have a special stamp for every JR station somewhere hiding on the platform. As the trains are so frequent , we didn't always have time to find them but at the larger stations they are quite prominent.

This first stamp was a target for one of the beautifully fine pens I picked up. The Japanese write so finely. As I get older my writing and drawing seems to be getting smaller.

It took a little while and some experimentation to work out how to include these strong designs into my diary pages alongside my tickets and other travel ephemera. They are quite different to some of my previous travel diaries from Japan and elsewhere. I am getting quite a collection of them but they don't take up much room in my drawers. I did show quite a few of them in the "Mind Mapping" exhibition several years ago. Who knows, the new ones might also get an airing sometime in the future.

As I used the same diary for our travels in Tasmania earlier this year, some of the unfinished drawings from Japan were finished in Tassie and the journey continues.

wear a different hat today

 Choose a hat (or several) and tell me who you have now become. These were all taken in Japan but I have been watching then all over the world getting up to their pranks. There just seemed to be so many in Japan  they became a bit of an obsession and became my main holiday snap shots (as well as man-hole covers).

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

N

O

P

Q

R

cracked

Some of my regular followers may remember this vermillion cracked crossing taken in Japan in June 2011. 
This time I was excited by some of the cracked white road markings. 

I wonder if the frequent earthquakes have anything to do with producing these. (We had one while we were there at 7.6 which made our 10th floor bedroom sway alarmingly. Just an everyday occurrence apparently.)
 I must admit I have not noticed them so beautifully cracked here in Brisbane but will certainly start looking. 

japanese rain

mountain mist

Just back from Japan for a week but still have not downloaded my numerous photos so perhaps a look at a couple of pages of my visual diary will give you some idea of what I got up to. There were two typhoons of the coast while we were there so we had some rainy weather and mist in the mountains and I'm so glad. I usually work on my diaries every night even when I'm away but of course with a smaller range of materials. Most of my diary work is somewhat more design oriented but in these two, I tried to get some sense of the misty atmosphere.

tokyo to nagano

Most of my other little mixed media memories are more graphic like these:

With all the bits of maps, tickets and other ephemera from our trip, I will continue to mine my memories and make inter-related little works for quite a while before taking off again for more new experiences. I'll post a few photos next post but probably not typical travel shots.