Sunday, May 9, 2010

9-armed sea star


Sometimes my etegami switch is flipped on by a random image or an overheard phrase. Does this ever happen to you? The other day, a Facebook friend posted a photo of a nine-armed sea star that she had come across while walking on a beach in Florida. The name "sea star" intrigued me. The idea of "nine arms" intrigued me. The next thing I knew, I was drawing it. Of course it would have been better if I had the creature in front of me as I drew, but photos are sufficient for times like this.

The cool thing about etegami is that it takes so little time and space to set up your tools if you have them all in a box or bag to begin with. Three minutes to set up, less than fifteen minutes for each attempt at drawing the subject. There's no re-doing or fixing-up with etegami. You have to take it or leave it as each one turns out. I actually tried five different versions on five different types of washi postcards. I was satisfied with two of them, though each was quite different from the other, due to the differences in how the ink spread through the paper.

Planning ahead is good. But spur-of-the-moment can be a lot of fun too.

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