I accidentally shrunk one of my favourite jumpers, and realised it would fit my 8-year-old niece! Before I gave it to her I mended 2 little moth holes by embroidering hearts over them…
I like the current trend for visible mending. I tried it on my cardigan too, but maybe that wasn’t such a success!
Over the winter holidays we went on a little trip to a ryokan called Keiunkan in Yamanashi. It’s the holder of the Guinness world record for the longest running inn in the world, there’s been a hot spring inn on the site since 750AD!
It was a beautiful and peaceful place, and the food was stunning, as well as delicious. I sketched, wrote letters, read books…
I went to each of the six different onsens, and my favourite was this outdoor rotemburo, which I often managed to have to myself. It was -6C in the evenings, and the chill air and the hot water was a wonderful combination.
I sat out on our little balcony, cooling down after a hot bath, and sketched the mountain views…
It was the perfect place to have a total rest and wind down at the end of the year!
We had a traditional Japanese end of year, and ate long soba noodles (Toshikoshi Soba) on New Year’s Eve…
… and made my grandmother’s recipe osechi New Year meal…
and even had some handmade (but this time not by me) omochi rice cakes with a mikan on top to celebrate.
Hurrah! And oshougatsu omedeto to you all!
Here’s my Christmas card this year, best wishes to you all, and hope everyone has a restful and refreshing holiday season.
I started this design with some rough sketches of ideas to show the family home in London, and we chose the fireplace version, rather than the front door.
The Christmas stockings represent the original Jesse family, and the kokeshi dolls on the fireplace represent my brother and his family, and the snowmen are me and my husband. I wanted to create a traditional, warm and cosy feeling, and yet also make it personal to my family.
This shows the progress of my watercolour artwork for the final card, with the addition of a cat (in memory of our beloved Smudge) and then orange and yellow on top of the blue, to add some winter fireside warmth. I tried to limit the colour palette so the key elements of the illustration would stand out. The final image has the colour increased in saturation, and I removed the potted plant on the left, as it wasn’t clear what it was in the final crop. Hope you like it.
Warm winter wishes to you all!
I’ve just got back from 10 days in London, where I visited family and friends. It’s a magical place at Christmastime, even in the rain and chill…
We had an early family Christmas and ate wonderful food and opened gifts. Looking forward to my second Christmas in Japan now! Hope you’re all getting ready for some quality holiday time…
It’s been an emotional and exhausting week in HK. I had many meetings, most memorable of which was the one for COPE at the HK Observatory. We had a tour of the building, and saw where they track storms and the weather. Amazing! In such a beautiful old colonial building…
I attended several Christmas fairs where faux were selling my HK ceramics…
… managed to find some time to admire the wonderful HK views!
I visited the newly revamped HK Museum of Art in Kowloon, and did some sketches in the Chinese antiquities gallery…
and was super happy to see my HK ceramic range for sale in the wonderful shop. Hurrah for HK!
I hope I can get back three soon…
I painted some watercolour illustrations for the annual ToCo published zine, this year entitled Himitsu, and we held a launch event for it last weekend. Thank you to everyone who made it there!
I created a series of images about a set of stairs I walk down on my way to work.
I included a little handwritten text about my thoughts and integrated them in the images.
It was really interesting to try something so different from my usual work. And focus on a single thing to work a narrative around…
I hope to join in again next year!
I’ve just got back from a week away in the Nagano countryside. It was a much needed rest, and a time to fill my eyes with the splendours of the Japanese Autumn.
We stayed at the Ryokan Nakadanasou, in a small town called Komoro, on the Eastern edge of Nagano. It was a little Japanese slice of perfection. The momiji trees were superbly red, the styling was minimal, and the onsen had local apples bobbing about in it, which gave a wonderful gentle appley scent to the whole bathroom. Bliss.
After a relaxing overnight at the ryokan, we drove on to the foothills of the Southern Yatsugatake mountains, to our rented cabin. The view of the koyo Autumnal colours was delightful, and the burbling of the river going by in the distance was all you could hear…
The weather was cold and rainy, and then cold and brilliantly sunny. We stayed in, cooked meals, and kept warm by the fire…
This sort of holiday is good for my imagination, and I had time to think about artwork I want to make, as well as catch up on current projects..
The pretty little still-lives around the cabin enticed me to draw also…
The listing for the cabin we stayed in on airbnb is here, in case anyone in Tokyo needs a little R & R.
I learned how to make soba last week, on a belated birthday gift course, it was really fun. There’s something very clean and beautiful about buckwheat flour and noodles…
I loved the whole process, and although I didn’t quite get a handle on the kneading, I absolutely adored chopping the dough into noodles…
At the end I did a taste-test of the noodles I made and also some fo the off-cuts. Delicious! I recommend a course like this to everyone!
I haven’t shown any maps recently, and I was thinking about the summer, and remembered this pretty little map I created for Conde Nast Traveller in the UK a while ago.
You can read the full article here, but be warned, it will make you want to go and take a holiday there immediately!
The new COPE website has just launched!
Everyone can download each of the books for free. Please read them and give them to your friends. It’s important to have this knowledge!
Hope you enjoy reading about our COPE characters and stories, as well as learning some useful disaster risk reduction techniques.
My London toile ceramics are finally available to buy in London! They are exclusively available there at the spa at the Four Seasons Park Lane.
The design features iconic London buildings such as Shakespeare’s Globe theatre, the London eye, the Shard and the Royal Albert Hall, as well as some slightly more local ones like pigeons, royal corgis and fish and chips! It’s a beautiful blue on fine bone china and I’m very proud of it. Hope you can check it out! Here’s how it looks in the Four Seasons lobby display vitrine…
The first two of the COPE series of picture books I illustrated are now available in Chinese! We worked with the HK Jockey Club Disaster Preparedness and Response Institute to have the books translated from the original English and printed.
It’s great the COPE books have started their international journey to help kids all over the world and teach them how to deal with disasters!
This weekend was a little unusual, as we waited for news of Typhoon Hagbis and its imminent approach to Toyko. I went to the Japan Folk Crafts Museum, to see the Soetsu Yanagi exhibition and wander in the beautiful rooms, and sketch…
…and then had a delicious dinner at eatrip, getting there and back in the oncoming typhoon rain!
All day saturday we stayed inside, waiting for the typhoon to pass over us, and I made a cake to relieve the stress. Thankfully we’re all safe here, and I hope the damage hasn’t been too bad elsewhere in Tokyo.
I painted a number house sign for my friend’s place in London while I was there. It’s in pale blue and brown, on a loose tile from the lovely old building.
I sketched out alternatives for her to choose from, and we decided on this modern-feeling number with a little fun touch on the tail of the number 6.
The renovations of the house are ongoing, but at least the postman knows where to deliver the letters now!
In my last week in London I managed to fit in quite a lot of things…and even this little sketch of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. All this time in London and I’m not sure I’ve ever drawn this building!
I ate some lovely British meals, took the train alot, and enjoyed the turn of the seasons from Summer to the beginning of Autumn.
I spent a wonderful day in central London, first with a meal near Chinatown, where I did this sketch…
…and then watching the marvellous Ian McKellen’s one man show. It was funny, moving, and downright dreamy.
And of course I spent time at home with my parents. I love these little vignettes that my mum makes in the house. This is the little window in the toilet, where she puts mini displays of flowers from the garden.
Visiting Corfu has been a dream of mine since childhood, as I had read and loved Gerald Durrell’s book My Family and Other Animals. As soon as I arrived I could feel the spell of the island. I loved it instantly. I had taken my copy of the book with me, to read again, and I was inspired to paint some olives into the front…
I visited some of the famous sites that were mentioned in the book: Kanoni and Mouse island…
And we wandered through the beautiful Corfu Town with its fascinating Venetian architecture…
One of my favourite days was when a group of us hired a little boat and went up the coast and found some magical little rocky coves, where we swam in the sparkling turquoise sea. It was truly a dream.
We moored our boat by a little taverna and enjoyed an icecream by the water.
I loved this white church on a tiny spit of land out in a bay. There was a wedding taking place when we sailed past, and I drew it from several angles.
I stayed in the adorable Hotel Nefeli, and lounged by the pool with friends several afternoons. It looked like a movie set!
I also sketched the incredible view from my balcony, at several different times of the day.
I had thought that maybe this would be my only trip to Corfu, but I loved it so much, I can’t wait to visit again…
My friends Anna and Johan had their wedding celebration in Corfu, and I created some illustrations for them (see my previous post for their wedding invitations).
I painted a little heart-shaped watercolour of kumquat branches as the label for their wedding favours, which contained various kumquat (a Corfu speciality) products, and hand-lettered their hummingbird place settings.
I sketched their blessing, cutting the cake (with firework candles!), the toasts, and even managed to eat and chat too.
I loved watching everyone dancing and having fun. I danced too, but I loved sketching the people more…
As a memento, I painted a lovely smooth pebble I found in the sea there for them. Such a wonderful happy time. Congratulations to the beautiful couple!
I spent a wonderful day this week as a guest member of the ‘first wednesday drawing club’. We went to the Rochester Square social space, and explored their ramshackle adorable gardens. There are bones of greenhouses, without any glass, filled with all sorts of vegetable plots and flowers in pots…
I enjoyed working out the complicated structures, but mostly I loved sketching the various plants in the sunshine.
These nasturtiums were glowing and golden and the shapes of the leaves were so fascinating.
I drew in a shady ivy-covered nook, and then one of the girls having her lunch…
I finished the day with this last sketch of the overhead beams and the vines growing up over them.
It was wonderful to end the day with a show-and-tell with the other sketchers, and see how the space had inspired everyone in different ways. I really should spend more time focussing on drawing!
I’ve just arrived in London, at the end of an English summer, enjoying the garden in the morning sunshine…
