Japanese folk art style water color and ink drawing of a barn swallow (bird with blue cap head and cape, red neck and belly, whitish remainder). At McMillan resevoir Washington DC

Japanese folk art style water color and ink drawing of a two small shore birds among some rocks. Birds seem to be killdeer (bird with stripes on neck and breast, long skinny beak, white gray brown color). ). At McMillan reservoir Washington DC

Birds of last summer!!
Did the ink parts last year but only just now painted them!
Can’t wait to see these guys again this summer!
#etegami #絵手紙

Etegami Japanese folk art card, featuring an orange citrus called sumo citrus, painted in a blotchy watercolor style with black ink outlines, red stamp in shape of an insect/ant waving its arms. A fruit sticker is affixed to the citrus drawing. Words say: you are sumo-thing special

Just remember, you are sumo-thing special. #etegami #絵手紙

Black and white etegami folk-style drawing in ink and watercolor of a mostly black dog with a white nose and white patch on ear. Dog is wearing black goggles. Dog is shown with halter face on card, to the right side of card, and just part of her back body showing. Words on card: “having a good time on a crummy day is our game,” from a B-52s song about a dog! On bottom left is red stamp in square shap with initials “al” in cursive writing.

Haven’t drawn much lately save for this #etegami for a friend, of her doggo, who had some vet treatment that required her to wear dog goggles (doggles??). Words: “having a good time on a crummy day is our game,” from a B-52s song about a dog!

Painting Etegami with my students. It’s one of my favourite classes.
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#watercolour #etegami #postcard #picturePostcard #watercolor #japaneseStyle

The Tanuniki Boys
Ink on Paper
2025
#Art
#mail-art
#etegami
#yokai
#tanuki

Two pears, one red and one green, then green one on its side, painted with watercolor and sumi ink in a Japanese folk art style.

Leaving you with #christmasstyle pears for the final day of #ArtAdventCalendar. I found a gorgeous red pear and painted it with its green cousin. They’d be a nice dessert after some Christmas-style enchiladas! 🌶️ #etegami #絵手紙　　happy Christmas!

Watercolor and ink painting of a moth, painted gold brown and aqua green. Red name stamp in lower left reading Alison.

neat! I did an #etegami painting of a moth w/ quote “moth’s kaleidoscoping like visible music” a few years ago, adjusting slightly words from Karen Russel’s Swamplandia! She’s brilliant and I’ll bet she purposefully used kaleidoscope. It just took me till today upon reading your post to realize it!

Watercolor and sumi ink painting of a bird on a branch of a holly tree. Branch has three green holly leaves and some red berries.

Nearing the end of #ArtAdventCalendar with Day 23, featuring a bird drawn from a friend’s photo. “In winter all the singing is in the tops of the trees” — Mary Oliver, White Eyes poem. #etegami #絵手紙

Watercolor and sumi ink painting of a sunflower stalk, with the yellow flower bent over and wilting. Words “be still and know that I am god” are on the right. Red stamp with an ant on it on left. White background.

Day 22 #ArtAdventCalendar
“be still and know that I am god” Psalm 46:10
This psalm feels like a mantra to me as someone who is not particularly religious but has an on-again-off-again zen meditation practice.
#etegami #絵手紙

Watercolor and sumi ink painting of two overlapping fan-shaped gingko leaves, mostly greens with tinges of autumn yellow and brown. Words “no feeling is final” on bottom. On left is a red stamp with lowercase cursive letters “al” on it.

Day 21 #ArtAdventCalendar
An #etegami of ginkgo leaves, with words from a Rilke poem: “Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.”
#絵手紙

Watercolor and sumi ink painting of a Buddha hand citron, which is an elongated fruit with tentacle that sort of look like fingers. Fruit is painted yellow, with black outlines and green stem, which is barely showing at top. To right are words “you are Buddha-ful” and under words is a red stamp with letters “AL”

Day 20 of #ArtAdventCalendar, and it’s time for another beautiful pun! “You are buddhaful!” … featuring an #etegami painting of a Buddha Hand citron. After painting this a few years ago I rendered it into several liters of “buddhacello” (limoncello) and gave to friends!

Watercolor and sumi ink painting of a black and white panda asleep on a green bamboo branch. Red stamp on the left reads “AL”. Words “Rushing isn’t healthy at all” across the top.

Day 19 of #ArtAdventCalendar and I’m going to take this message seriously as I return to work after a holiday in Portugal. “Rushing isn’t healthy at all” #etegami 絵手紙

Watercolor and sumi ink painting of a duck, with its bill very prominently in foreground. Duck is yellow, with orange legs and a sky blue bill. Words “odd duck” written lower left and middle; and a red name stamp in lower right reading “al”.

An “odd duck” for Day 18 of #ArtAdventCalendar !
#etegami 絵手紙

Etegami-style painting of a black cormorant with a gold beak and blue eyes, its wings outstretched as they typically pose, with a red book in its beak. Done of book reads “Coleridge.” Red name stamp under wing on right. Words on top read: “library-cormorant: one omnivorous and voracious in reading.”

Day 27 of #ArtAdventCalendar… a goofy cormorant! Words are from Coleridge’s whimsical dictionary entry for a “library-cormorant: one omnivorous and voracious in reading.” #etegami 絵手紙

Japanese folk art painting of two swallows on a wire, with a red name stamp to thr right reading “Alison”

Day 16 of #ArtAdventCalendar… a drawing of two swallows with words from Gustave Flaubert’s Dictionary of Received Ideas: “Always refer to them as the ‘harbingers of spring’. Since no one knows where they come from, say they are ‘travelers from a distant shore.’ This is poetic.” #etegami 絵手紙

Japanese folk art style, “etegami”, painting with black sumi ink and watercolor, featuring a girl sitting cross-legged reading a book, her head bowed down. She’s wearing glasses and has black hair. Words “I consume libraries” at top, red name stamp reading “alison” at bottom.

Day 14 of #ArtAdventCalendar… “I consume libraries” #etegami, with words from David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest. Full quote is wonderful: ‘I consume libraries. I wear out spines and ROM-drives. I do things like get in a taxi and say, “The library, and step on it.”’ 絵手紙

Japanese folk art style watercolor and ink drawing on a postcard. Image is of a yellow gerbera daisy, with green stem, from side angle, in a small campari soda glass bottle, half filled with water. To left and right of image are words: “I can get drunk on things like the gerbera daisy.” To the left os a red stamp with shape of an ant with a heard.

Day 13 of #ArtAdventCalendar… an #etegami of a flower in a small Campari soda bottle I got in Italy many years ago, perfect for a single stem flower!
“I can get drunk on things like the gerbera daisy”… words from Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (but I changed her tulip for the gerbera!!)

Black sumi ink painting on postcard of a dog’s face, close up so that you only see the right side of its face. Dog is black and white coloring with a droopy type of ear. Card has two red stamps on it, one is of an ant and other has letters AL intertwined. Words are from Ambrose Bierce: “Dog - a kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world's worship.””

Day 12 of #ArtAdventCalendar! A portrait of a friend’s dog who’d recently passed away… Words are from Ambrose Bierce: “Dog - a kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world's worship.” #etegami 絵手紙

Close up of a white flower with yellow stamen, painted in Japanese-folk-art style etegami, with black sumi ink and a bit of green and yellow watercolor. Words “ now is now” written at top. Red stamp of ant on top

Day 11 of #ArtAdventCalendar, with an #etegami postcard of a white flower. “Now is now”… from the beautiful words written by Laura Ingalls Wilder on the last page of Little House in the Big Woods.

Japanese etegami-style watercolor and sumi ink painting on postcard, with plant having two flowers that are purple and yellow and white, on green stems with leaves. Small red name stamp in lower left with “ア” (“a” in Japanese katakana) and words “ yes risk joy” around blossoms.

Day 10 of #ArtAdventCalendar…. An #etegami with words “Yes risk joy” from Louise Glück’s “Snowdrops” poem… painted from a photo I took in Georgetown of some violet-like flowers growing from a brick wall. #絵手紙

Etegami style watercolor and sumi ink painting: green stalk of broccoli raab on left with recipe on right. Recipe reads: Roasted Raab 1 bunch broccoli raab rinsed and dried, olive oil, 2 cloves garlic sliced, sal and pepper, 1/4 lemon.

Happy day 9 of #ArtAdventCalendar, with an #etegami of a broccoli raab recipe! Sent to one of my Raab relatives! I must have written the rest of the recipe on the back! I think it’s that you roast it at 400 for 15 minutes, turning once. 絵手紙

Japanese folk-art style watercolor and sumi ink painting on white postcard, featuring a yellow bell pepper outlined in black. Pepper has a green top. Name stamp in red has name “alison”. Words, “put a sun in Sunday, Sunday” are written on top left

Day 8 of #ArtAdventCalendar… “put a sun in Sunday, Sunday” #etegami card… words from Gertrude Stein poem.

As light as a feather yet strong as the wind. #Etegami inspired art. #ArtAdventCalendar

Japanese-folk-art style painting with cat laying on its back, eyes shut, left paw extended down and right paw onits belly. Cat is painted with black ink outline, body left white, its ears are black it has a pink nose. Words “all Bets are off!” on the right bottom of work. At the left paw is a circular red stamp with “あ” (A) in hiragana script, it sort of looks like a cat toy ball. In upper left corner is another red stamp in shape of a mouse.

Happy December 7th #ArtAdventCalendar… featuring my #etegami of my friend Bet’s cat cat-napping, given to Bet for her retirement! “All Bets are off!” #絵手紙　#caturday

A blue and green dragonfly with silvery painted wings, perched atop the top of a pink lotus blossom. Artwork painted in etegami style, a Japanese folk art where you use sumi ink for outlines and just a few colors, painted in a simple style. Artwork also has Japanese written on it: “日短かは蜻蛉の身にも有にけり hi mijika wa tombo no mi ni mo ari ni keri the day is short as is the life of the dragonfly“ At bottom is year 2024 written, with a red stamp showing letter “A”

For December 6th #ArtAdventCalendar, a dragonfly #etegami, with a haiku by Issa on it… 日短かは蜻蛉の身にも有にけり
(hi mijika wa tombo no mi ni mo ari ni keri)
the day is short
as is the life
of the dragonfly

Watercolor of a maple leaf. In red with splotch of green. Painted on white card, with two stamps, one reading Alison and other is a funny ant with a heart in its chest. Picture is posed next to a read maple leaf, from which the picture was drawn

Happy December 5th of #ArtAdventCalendar! A thank you card I painted recently. #etegami 絵手紙

Photo of artwork before it was painted blue, just showing black inked outlines. In background on table is the actual teapot painted.

Japanese-folk style singing of blue cast iron teapot with a dragonfly design on it. Words “beau-tea-ful” written above. Background is white.

Punny little 絵手紙　#etegami I did earlier this year while visiting ABQ family… it was a very cold, snowy visit so a lot of beau-tea-ful tea was drunk. #ArtAdventCalendar

Postcard size art, ant with black ink outline and filled in with gray and shimmery watercolor, words “I am a glittery little ant” to the left. A red stamp in shape of an ant on bottom.

“I’m a glittery little ant”… an Alannis Morissette lyric that tickles me. The first part of my name can mean “ant” in Japanese, so I use it often as my name stamp on #etegami art like this. Happy December 3rd of #ArtAdventCalendar

Etegami-style drawing of a chicken, with words “give a cluck” written on it, and year 2017.

Happy #ArtAdventCalendar to all those who celebrate! Here’s my post for December 1st. #etegami of a chicken, “give a cluck”, painted as my 2017 New Years card.

"Ein bisschen rumspinnen. "
Tusche auf Papier
15 x 10 cm
#art #brushdrawing #etegami