Matsuri zine

The new issue of the ToCo zine is out now! This issue has the subject of matsuris, Japanese festivals. I chose to create a story about the food that is often found at festivals. I made a pattern for the inside covers in full colour…

The cover features dancers in tradtional costume, drawn by @odding.

I drew my illustataions in a loose sketchy pen and ink style, with annotations in both Japanese and English. They are stories and memories of matsuri food I’ve loved since I was a child.

These tasty snacks on sticks show the traditional to the modern. Tastes change, but the fact everyone loves a snack at a festival certainly doesn’t!

The zines are available direct from ToCo, or I have a few copies myself. ¥1000 plus postage. You can email if you’re interested!

sketchbooks

My friend Yoonmi Nam set up a local scholarship with Wonderfair in Lawrence Kansas, and ran a sketchbook competition for local students and asked our mokuhanga group to be the jurors. It was a great experience, you can see the winning sketchbooks on Yoonmi’s instagram page and with the instagram tag #sketchbookscholarship.

It reminded me of all my own sketchbooks, and made me want to get out and draw again! Here are some of my old(ish) sketchbooks…

#walktowork photos

I’ve been recording my walk to work with photos on instagram for the last few months, and this week I tried something new - I collected photos in the order of the colours of the rainbow! I’ve done it twice so far, it keeps me on my toes!

new Hong Kong Willow ceramics

The new teapot and teacup and saucer in my Hong Kong Willow Collection are available! They are printed in the same beautiful blue, but this time with gold details that shine and twinkle delightfully…

In the teacup set, Kowloon is shown on the saucer, with HK on the teacup itself. I really like this new straight-sided cup and teapot!

They are both available from faux and a few other stores in HK. Hope you enjoy them!

frogs

I was commissioned by a friend recently to make a woodblock print for his wife for their anniversary, and as she loves frogs, to somehow include them in the artwork. I researched Nepalese frogs (where my friends live) and created a pared down image of 2 frogs with 6 leaves (the number of years of marriage they’re celebrating). I’m so glad they like it!

happy new year!

It’s 2021 (finally!) and we saw in the new year with a scrumptious home-made osechi meal at home.

I love the Japanese traditions for new year, and take pride in making the meal. We decided it wasn’t safe this year to go to the temple to ring the bell at midnight as we usually do, but we listened to the bells ringing out in the night in the distcance.

Happy Year of the Ox everyone! It’s my year, so I’m hoping for good things…

Christmas day 2020

We spent a lovely Christmas day, preparing and eating a wonderful, cosy feast of a meal. We even managed to find parsnips!

We ate, we drank, we chatted online with our families and then we ate some more. We spent time thinking of how grateful we are for all that we have.

I hope your Christmas was as cosy as you could make it, and that your day was full of smiles. M x

cosy Christmas greetings!

Here is this year’s Christmas card - a Victorian-style image of a hand with a posy…

I was inspired by one of my English grandmother’s Victorian Christmas decorations of a hand holding a Christmas rose. It’s an old tin/pewter clip to hold a real candle. I also looked at various imagery of hands and flowers and designed my own simpler, modern version.

I did various sketches, adding and taking away details until I found what I wanted. I added a ribbon with a greeting and a more Christmassy selection of flowers and leaves. I then ordered a rubber stamp and hand-stamped each card in black and painted the colour elements. Each card is unique!

I wrote all my cards the old-fashioned way this year, with a dip pen and ink - messages of love and good wishes to all my friends and family around the world, in this crazy time.

Take care, stay safe, and have a cosy Christmas at home everyone. All my love, Mariko x

Chiba trip

We’ve just returned from a 5 day trip to Minamiboso in the south of Chiba. It was a relaxing break away from the city, in a beautiful house looking out onto green hills…

We did a few trips into the hills and valleys to visit some lovely sights - the autumn colours were absolutely glorious! We saw the Komatsu-ji temple grounds and walked along the riverbed near the nomizo falls.

It was also wonderful to get some sea air, and the discovery of this tiny island with red torii gate was like going back in time.

I did a few sketches and collected some broken bits of china from the beach. It was so restful!

We stayed in a modern house and enjoyed cooking at home, writing Christmas cards and catching up with family over skype. Lovely.

Now back in Tokyo and working to get things wrapped up before the holidays!

Playtimes magazine

COPE has been featured in the latest issue of Playtimes Magazine in Hong Kong! Interview with Martha Keswick and photos of us both. Great to see the books getting some love…

Artists Sunday

I’m happy to be taking part in tomorrow’s Artists Sunday, the first of its kind. Imagine Black Friday, but for art! I’ll be adding some new and special prints into my shop. Hope you can take a look!

Hopefully this initiative will encourage people to buy some art directly from artsits and help support the community!

autumn in tokyo

Although we haven’t travelled much this year, it’s been wonderful to see the seasons changing in a small way in the city. Autumn is always magnificent, and the weather this year is sublime.

I’m absolutely loving all the vibrant colours in the leaves as I walk to work, both on the trees and on the ground…

The gingko leaves are turning yellow and even in the night their golden magic shines.

illustoria magazine

I’m so proud of my niece Isla whose illustration ‘Underwater Sea Creature’ has been chosen for the new issue of the fantastic magazine illustoria - The Maps Issue.

We worked on this picture together during lock-down in the spring, when Isla couldn’t go to school.

It’s a gentle sea creature, floating quietly and used by people as a place to sunbathe! I love her use of lettering too. Hurrah!

izu holiday

For the first time this crazy year, we had a short holiday away from home. We took every precaution and walked to the car hire place, and drove to Izu peninsula to stay in an Airbnb house that we had to ourselves. We even took all our own groceries so we could cook our meals at home! It was wonderful to have a change of scene and breathe some good clean country air…

We went up Mt Omuro, a beautiful green volcanic crater and walked around the rim enjoying the incredible 360 degree views.

I’d always wanted to pick mikan (tangerines) and we found a little farm near the coast where we were the only people and ate so many mikan, tasting all the different kinds. We saw a perfectly camouflaged preying mantis and many chickens!

Of course no trip to Izu is complete without seeing the sea. We walked along the Jogasaki coast and I managed a quick sketch of this suspension bridge in the sunshine.

The sparkling sea and pine trees reminded me of the coast along Big Sur in California…

The weather was perfect and every evening there were fantastic skies. I tried to capture the unbelievable pink of the clouds…

We drove back to Tokyo along the Izu skyline road and saw many views of the always majestic Mt Fuji…

I wonder when we’ll be away to get away again. But for now it’s nice to be home again.

new studio

I’ve just started a trial period in a new studio of a friend of a friend, and am going to try it out for a month. During this coronavirus time I had thought it might be best to work from home for a while, but when this opportunity came, I took it! It’s a half hour walk from home, in a new and different area I don’t know very well, so it will be fun to explore. Here a few pics of the super retro building and the lovely minimal studiospace. Fingers crossed it works out!

CWAJ print show

I’m so excited to have a print in the CWAJ print show this year. You can see my print here in the nature section.

I made this print at the Mi-Lab mokuhanga residency in the summer of 2019. It was one of those prints that flowed easily and has one of the smoothest bokashis I’ve ever printed! It’s an edition of 17, with 15 being available to buy. You can contact the CWAJ if you’re interested in purchasing one.

The show will be online for one more week. I hope you have time to take a look.

Vancouver Art Book Fair part 2

The fair is now open and online all this weekend! I am participating with ArtByteCritique on a table around the middle. If you click here for the fair, and then click this little circle, you’ll find us…

Someone from the group will be online during the opening hours if you’d like to chat with us - just type into the chat box.

I’ve finally put some more of my work into my online shop, and the link from the VABF goes straight there. My hand-bound sketchbooks are available, as well as the little zines I made especially for this fair. I’ll keep some of the items available in my shop after the fair is over, but probably not my sketchbooks, which I’ll keep for the next special event!

Hope you’ll enjoy browsing the site and maybe grab yourself a zine or book or print!

Vancouver Art Book Fair

This coming week I will be taking part in the Vancouver Art Book Fair with my Tokyo art group Art Byte Critique.

One of the group members will always be available to live chat during the fair, and to purchase any of the work, there’s a link through to each artist’s online shop. I’ll be showing 2 new zines and a selection of my handmade sketchbooks:

This is a little limited edition zine I made with my black and white Night Garden extra prints - with added pochoir colour elements.

I also made an even smaller zine with my extra ‘leaf cloud puddle’ mokuhanga prints and added a tiny collage beetle onto the last page.

Both of the zines are in an edition of 10 pieces only. I love the feel of them all in a pile like this…

Hope to see you at the fair!

25 year anniversary!

This year is my silver jubilee of being a commercial illustrator! Twenty five years since I walked out of Central Saint Martins and started drawing for a living. I had planned to have an exhibition in HK to celebrate, but that’s on hold for now. So instead, I’m putting together a book, looking back at important projects and clients throughout my career so far, and posting on instagram as I go…

Sweet Anthology

Today I’m looking back at a project I did with a friend who set up a sweet company in the UK, over 10 years ago. The brand was called Sweet Anthology, and told the stories of the sweets, as well as packaging them up beautifully to sell.

I designed the brand logo, writing the name by hand and creating an illustration of classical looking mermaids creating the magic of sweets. I used bright candy colours to make everything look delectable.

The logo was printed on shiny stickers that were used to seal the sweet jars alongside colourful ribbons.

We then went on to create an incredible website that really worked well and was fun to browse. I made little illustrations to highlight the individual sweets.

Unfortunately the company didn’t last in the long term but I still look back on the project fondly as one of the most personal I’ve undertaken. I’m proud of the work we did!