Archive for the “design” Category

After – way after – a 13th century painting by monk Mu Qi.

If you squint at it, you can sort of see the bird.

This is why, in the old days, you had to grind ink for a year before they let you touch a brush.

Starting a sumi-e class.  It’s not so much the ink or the subject matter, it’s the way of seeing.

Well, we’ve made another trip around the sun, just one of the possible significances of this year’s new year card image.  In a break from historical practice, rather than using a photograph of some kind, I hand-painted one of these circles on each card.  Yes, I still insist on sending paper cards even though every year it gets more expensive to mail them and harder to gather the snail addresses of online friends. Whether you get a paper one or are just looking at this on your screen, I hope you enjoy it.

Happy new year everybody!