Daruma - Here's One for my Dad

I remember when we lived in Japan when I was a kid, my dad loved daruma. The idea is that you buy one of these round, red figures, make a wish and paint in one of the eyes with a black pen or paintbrush. Then when your wish or prayer comes true, you paint in the other eye. I had fun sketching a few daruma in a small restaurant in Ueno while I waited for my lunch to arrive. Then on my last day in Japan, in the surprisingly lovely town of Narita, near the airport, I saw a huge display of daruma on sale. Here's to you, dad. 

City of Gems

Wash your hands. Cleanse your mouth. 

Kyoto really is one of my favourite cities in the world. When you first arrive there, it looks like other Japanese cities. It is relatively low rise, with tight streets and fairly nondescript buildings. But Kyoto is a fabulous place to discover with a bugs eye view. It is best seen close up and intimately. The details of doorways, the tiny temples and shrines, the winding streets and waterways. And mostly it is fun to explore the ring of amazing temples and shrines that are on the edge of the hills, encircling the city. I feel like you could discover new precincts on every visit. There are some really famous and stunning destination shrines and temples; Ginkakuji, Kiyomizudera, Saihoji, Tenruji. But to be honest, my favourites have always been the lesser know and almost unvisited places that you stumble upon. Kyoto is full of these stunning and yet largely overlooked gems.

This time we did make the effort to pre-book the famous Kokedera or Saihoji, The Moss Garden. The last time Chris and I tried to see it, the place was closed for something like 20 years so the moss could recover. So this time, prompted by our co-travellers, we decided to try again. In order to make the booking, you need to send a self addressed post card with a Japanese return address to the monks, requesting permission to visit. In order to ensure that our letter had been received and booking secured, I phoned Saihoji from Canada, twice. I think they may have granted us permission so that I would stop calling and harassing them in my less than perfect Japanese. So the four of us, and about 50 others arrived at 10 am, chanted sutras, wrote our prayers and then were allowed to walk in the garden. It was lovely, the moss seemed to have recovered. I captured a quick drawing in the rest area near the exit.

Kyoto Photo - A Confession

I really love Kyoto; temples, doorways, canals, glimpses of geisha. Your eyes just bug out at every turn. The details astound. Okay, so here is the confession. 99% of the time, I draw from what is in front of me, from real life. And very occasionally,  I use a photo. This painting of the Japanese woman wearing a kimono in front of the Kyoto doorway is from a photograph. And you may also be astute enough to see that it is from the cover photo of the Lonely Planet Kyoto book by Chris Rowthorn. The book is just excellent. Chris also has a wonderful blog called Inside Kyoto. (http://www.insidekyoto.com)

So there it is, out in the open. And the reason I wanted to include this little fraud is because of a lovely, new trend we saw in Kyoto during this visit. The cobbled streets and temple precincts were full of young (mostly) Japanese men and women, dressed in lovely traditional kimono and zori (footwear). There seems to be a new pride in things traditional and it was so lovely seeing these youngsters so beautifully turned out, strolling   through old Kyoto. I am fully aware that this is just another tourist service - rent a kimono for the day - but there was nothing tacky tourist about it at all. These young people looked elegant and resplendent. They were delighted and delightful.

Of Street Corners,Trains and Coffee Nation: Drawing on Marginal Time

Water soluble pen

I took a really wonderful online art course with Roz Stendahl this summer call Drawing Live Subjects in Public. Roz is a wonderful artist and also a fabulous teacher. She is passionate (I don't use that term lightly) about daily and intentional practice. I got as much out of her practice philosophy as I did from her expert technical instruction. I have never encountered a teacher who is as rigorous with her feedback and as devoted to individual students. Generous, creative, disciplined, hilarious, quirky and hardworking, always leading by example. Did I mention prolific?  Check her out. http://www.rozwoundup.typepad.com

All this to say, I have (with intention and efforts at daily practice) been trying to add lively, moving people and animals to my sketchbook. There is no shortage of subject matter, just the challenging reality that people and animals move, constantly. And yet, the urban sketching I admire most is animated with sentient beings. So during the recent trip to Japan, I made efforts to include live subjects. As an aside, cell phones have become my unexpected ally in that people sit very still when they are looking at their phones, a gift to the sneaky transit sketcher.









The other factor about urban sketching is that there are opportunities to draw in every circumstance. Marginal time; that is to say time at the edges of the "star attraction" travel experiences, is often the best time for fresh and spontaneous drawing. Drawing people on trains, or on street corners or even in temples, capture slices of everyday life that, for me, are full of meaning and conjure up memories of the trip. These are not always the "best" drawing or paintings to look at. But there is a rough sincerity in the quick, incomplete and often ill composed pages.

Grabbing street corner time while others wait for coffee

Let me say, my travel companions were quite attached to their coffee habit. Coffee is definitely available in Japan but coffee purists have to got to quite an effort to find the "real" espresso machines. Further, coffee is not a morning ritual in Japan so  Coffee Nation usually has to wait until at least 10 am (sometimes noon) to find a cup of java brewed to their standards and specifications.  Instant and drip do not meet the gold standard. On one particular day, after google searches and a destination trip, I had a full 15 minutes to sketch on a street corner  while the barista opened the kiosk and the Percent Arabia machine got fired up. The resulting fragmented sketches zoom me back to that day, people watching and capturing fragments.

Getting Stuff Done in Tokyo

In the couple of days before I met up with the other three adventurers, I had some business to get done in Tokyo. The plan was to spend a week in Shikoku, walking part of the Henro pilgrimage. There is one good guide book in English, the most recent edition of which was published 3 weeks before I arrived in Japan. Perfect. All I had to do was find the specialist map bookstore and buy it. I had not anticipated the Fall Equinox National Holiday so my first attempt to get the book was thwarted. I did find it but it was closed for the day. So I returned early the next day, too early in fact for the 10 am opening. (think jet lag) But as an urban sketcher, there is never an issue with waiting around. It is just a fab opportunity to get one more sketch in, which I did.

And then the rest of the day was free for cycling my rental bike all over Tokyo. That was superb. In Japan, everyone rides on the sidewalks so no worries about dodging cars and trucks. It was the first time, in all of the years that I spent in Japan, that I had a feel for how the districts of Tokyo link together. It is a mammoth city and yet relatively flat, so very doable on a bike. Whee!

Meiji Shrine

Rows of lanterns at Meiji Shrine, Tokyo. 

Chris and I still remember our visit 20 years ago to the huge and famous Meiji Shrine, near Harajuku and Omotesando in Tokyo. We settled onto a bench to do a bid of sketching and with seconds, a guard in a grey uniform came over, hand up and said: "No drawing long time." Needless to say, this time around, I expected a similar fate as I quietly pullout out my sketchbook. To buy delight, I sat for about an hour and to my double delight, the shrine was filled with traditional wedding activity. It was so colourful, serene and stately. And of course, I had to capture a couple of views of those official guys in grey. That day they were too busy trying to keep tourists out of the wedding processions to be worried about drawing infractions.

Getting Started

Getting the sketching started in a new location can take a bit of gumption. Before a trip, I have rosy fantasies of drawing my way through foreign cities but sometimes making the paint hit the paper is astonishingly intimidating.

I had a couple of days in Tokyo on my own, before I connected with Chris and our friends. Jet lag was working in my favour so I was up early and the days were warm and bright. As I wandered around Inaricho, near Ueno, I happened onto one of of the numerous shrines in the neighbourhood. There was a place to sit, where (ironically) local business men and women came to smoke so I got started. As an aside, it is remarkably hard to find benches in public places in Japan. There seems to be a general discouragement of lingering. And also, garbage cans are non-existent. The streets are impeccably clean but it is not that easy to find garbage cans and recycling bins. Hmm.

 So, I sketched, listening to the local salarymen gossiping. The sun came around and pushed me off my bench. And so the day and the sketching began.