Point Reyes

It’s my birthday weekend! As a treat, I managed to go on a little trip (not too far) and spent 2 days in and around Point Reyes, visiting the Point Reyes National Seashore, and even managed to do some sketching…

This is Indian Beach, and it was totally empty, except for jellyfish, floating along happily in the sunshine.

I sketched the sailing boats in Tomales Bay, and then the wetlands and bridge over the mouth of the river where it fed into the bay.

Cow Track Ranch was an incredible, cosy place to stay, and I loved the whole cowboy feeling of the interiors! Also the chickens and swallows…

The hills were all dry and yellow, but still beautiful. I really hope it rains soon, and that the land can become green again.

Can’t wait for another little trip there soon!

new mokuhanga print 2

It’s finished! Here’s my newest print summer blooms all framed up, ready for the Summer Colour Exhibition at 3331 Arts Chiyoda in Tokyo in 2 weeks.

It’s a 4 block print, with a variety of layering and bokashi techniques. I wanted to create more realistic looking flowers than my usual, but still with my feature flatness. I love how the stems came out!

Here’s my printing set-up with sketches to work from, and a detail of one of the buds. Hope you can pop in to the show to take a look!

new mokuhanga print

I’m working on a new mokuhanga print of flowers. I bought some ranunculus blooms and sketched them in a variety of positions, and worked out a design that’s slightly more realistic than my usual work. I’m trying something a little different for this one! I then transferred my sketch to a largish piece of wood and started carving…

I can’t wait to test out some lovely colours for printing!

summer newsletter

Hello and welcome to July! I just sent out my third newsletter, filled with Mariko news and some interesting tidbits from around the internet.

I’m still working out what works in a newsletter (all advice welcome) but one thing I like is to start with a recent topical sketch that I make specially. This is the view from the balcony here in California.

You can sign up for my newsletters here. Thanks!

mokuhanga baren pin

My printmaking collective wood+paper+box commissioned a jeweller to create some beautiful bronze lapel pins for us to sell. The money raised will go towards funding our future projects.

The pins are hand-made by Kansas-based jeweler Sunyoung Cheong. They are adorable 3-dimensional miniature replicas of mokuhanga barens. Each pin is 17mm in diameter (approximately the size of a dime) and we packaged them in kraft paper boxes, with our new “I love mokuhanga” stamps.

We had 15 pins for our soft launch this week, which sold out almost immediately!

DM @woodpaperbox on instagram if you’d like to be added to the waitlist for our official launch later in the summer. They are the perfect accessory for all woodblock printing geeks. I wear mine with pride!

Huntington Library parasol

A few years ago I designed an exclusive toile for the Huntington Library in California. It was used on a variety of products to sell in the Huntington store and their online store. This week they posted this beautiful image of the paper parasol featuring the toile on their instagram. I love it!

I would love to walk in the gardens with the parasol, just like this…

I visited the gardens before I started the design, and featured little vignette scenes of their various garden areas, like the desert gardens and famous Japanese garden. Both the teapot and teacups are available in the store.

walking locally

Yesterday was vaccine day! Out of quarantine at last, walking in the local area was so full of wonderful things to look at…

The day started out cloudy, but soon turned into the perfect summer day…so happy to have had the first shot and can’t wait to be fully vaccinated!

California

I’m currently in quarantine at home in California, visiting for a while to get some things sorted out. Jet lag is tricky, but not being able to go out means I’m just going with the flow. It means I also get to see the sun come up…

Super excited to get vaccinated while I’m here! I can’t wait to be able to go out and about, and not have to worry quite as much as before.

Eric Carle

The wonderful illustrator Eric Carle passed away this week, and I’ve been thinking about all the ways he inspired me. Reading the Very Hungry Caterpillar is one of my earliest memories - I loved the colours, the holes in the paper, and the surprise ending. Along with Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, it was the book that made me want to become an illustrator…

There’s an animated version you can watch here.

When I was looking for a way to use collage as a technique for an illustration project, I watched a video of Eric explaining how he worked. I love his rough textures and bright colours and how he used simple cutting and super advanced glueing in his pictures, and he added colour pencil details.

I experimented with his style, and moved away from the fragile tissue paper he preferred and used thick paper for my collage illustrations for the River Cottage much more veg cookbook. I wanted shadows on my images, to show depth, and so that you could see the physical layers of the paper. I chose an opaque look, over Eric’s transparent layering, but tried to capture some of his movement and texture in the paint and pencil marks.

I will forever be grateful for how Eric Carle changed children’s books, and for how he inspired me personally.

Thank you Mr Carle, for making the world a more beautiful place. RIP.

studio move

I left the calm and peaceful ambience of my shared studio a week ago, and I already miss the little park next door and having a separate place to work with a great studio mate. She runs viridi workshop, so the studio always smelled absolutely wonderful!

I really got to know all the different routes I could take to get to the studio, and my instagram hashtag #walktowork became a great reason to photograph my daily walks.

Hopefully I’ll ease into working from home…

wood + paper + box live

Katie Baldwin, Yoonmi Nam and I spoke about our collaborative project wood + paper + box in an online live conversation hosted by The Print Center in Philadelphia this week.

It was so amazing to look at the beginnings of our work right from the moment we all met in Nagasawa in 2004. You can watch the whole conversation here.

We showed each box we’ve made, plus edited videos (all available to see on our wood + paper + box website) and took turns talking about all the elements of our work, exhibitions and future plans.

I even managed a quick sketch during the Q & A…

We’ve already started talking about box 5!

new Hong Kong Willow collection photos

I decided to photograph the new pieces in my Hong Kong Willow collection as I received some samples and wanted to get some images for promotion.

The teapot is in blue, with lovely gold detailing that shines softly in the light. I love it!

The plates show HK side and Kowloon side and celebrate HK’s famous harbour.

There are plates in two sizes, cups with saucers, a teapot, and coasters. Also a mug, although I don’t have that sample yet.

All the products can be purchased directly from faux here, or this is a list of other retailers in HK.

golden week printmaking

It’s been golden week in Tokyo, and I made use of the holiday to do some mokuhanga printmaking.

I reprinted my poppy print in blacks, in a tiny edition…

…and my bird vase print in a darker blue. I’m hoping to enter them into some competitions. Fingers crossed!

IMPACT 11 Conference

I had the privilege of presenting my Cheung Sha Wan HK MTR station public art project at the IMPACT11 Printmaking conference this week. I made a 15 minute video talking about how it was produced and how it looks. It was really interesting to revisit the project after such a long time.

A selection of my work was also shown in the open portfolio section of the conference website. If the conference had gone ahead in HK, I would have been able to show the actual artwork, and let people enjoy the tactility of the prints. As it is, at least you can see images, and read a little about them.

I showed a variety of my more ‘book arts’ style work, where there are folded, cut out, layered or other unusual elements to the pieces. Like this fan I made with some of my mokuhanga prints.

Here is a screenshot of the discussion panel I was in, with Yung Sau-mui from the HK Open Printshop as the moderator. I was nervous about doing the Q&A but I think it went ok!

While watching the presentations, I also sketched the speakers, so I could remember who they were. Here’s a compilation of the sketches…

For a totally virtual conference, I think it went pretty well!

write_on lettering event

I absolutely loved being part of the write_on Kindness Card Challenge event, organised by Hello!Lucky cards and egg press. I introduced myself, showed some of my work that features calligraphy plus illustration, discussed my calligraphy tools, and then talked about how to address envelopes with illustrations, to make them a little more fun…

The event wasn’t timed for Japan, so I was up at 3am, and set up a special lighting arrangement for the zoom call.

Over 20 artists talked and showed their work, and I sketched them while I watched. It was fascinating to see everyone’s lettering/letter-writing ideas!

These are some of the envelopes I prepared for my 2 minute show-and-tell. I made up an address to use, and decorated the envelopes in a simple but attractive way.

This is me during the event, looking extremely nervous!

Thank you to everyone who tuned in, and also to everyone who left such lovely comments in the chat during the evening. Hurrah for letter-writing!

CMA promotional plates

I recently did the illustrations for these promotional plates for the CMA in HK. Each plate represents a different era of their long history in HK, and the different areas they work in.

My favourite to research and work on was the first plate, which showed the original CMA building in the 1950’s. I did it in sepia tones, with gold highlights, and loved drawing the old bus and lady with 1950’s hair!

I wove bauhinia flowers, the national flower of HK, into the designs of each of the four plates. The blue plate features the 1960’s trade shows of the CMA, the third plate features famous HK brands and products through the ages, and the last shows modern technology and science in HK today.

Cheung Sha Wan MTR station

I was doing some web research about Cheung Sha Wan MTR station in HK last week, as I put together a presentation about my project there, and I found an amazing video made by CULTURE magazine, totally by chance.

It was made last year, and it was so nice to see the thoughtful filming and insightful comments. Thanks CULTURE magazine!

You can click here to see the whole video!

sakura season

It’s sakura season in Japan! I feel the mono no aware so keenly this year for some reason. I’m enjoying each moment, each tree, each flower…

Happy spring!

spring pop-up shop

This weekend I’m taking part in the online pop-up shop organised by Art Byte Critique , my art group in Tokyo. I’ve added some older (and precious) prints into my shop for this weekend only, and am also offering a discount on all sales through sunday.

There are so many wonderful artists in our group, please do take a look:

Happy art shopping! Thanks for your support.

HOBBS candles

HOBBS LONDON, a boutique fashion brand in the UK, has produced some candles with my illustrations on - I haven’t seen the actual products yet, but they look great online! You can purchase them here.

I especially like the one with the drawing I did of the HOBBS store in Hampstead. I used to live near there, and would often wander around the streets sketching the area.

Hope the candles smell great too. If you get one, please do let me know what you think!