Dear Sarah - 004

Everyday things seen with fresh eyes... dogs and glass jugs

(Just joining us? These letters chronicle our full year of daily drawings and accompanying correspondence/conversation. Learn more about Sarah Harvey here. More info about me can be found here.)

Dear Sarah - January 4, 2024

Sheltie convention at the Yoyogi Dog Park - not sure if this kimono was an everyday outfit or just trotted out for special occasions like New Year’s Day.

The Little Prince was one of my favourite books from childhood. It’s one I think I should re-read right about now as I feel as though I’m experiencing some kind of strange second childhood atm (as the cool kids say…) You totally captured the impish confidence I remember…

As for Anton’s hat, it did not have a tail. It was quite chilly on New Year’s Eve, a stiff breeze funnelled through the glass and steel canyons of downtown Tokyo. The musician was wearing some variation of a Russian fur cap… His hair was also too short and face slightly too broad to actually be our Anton, but this is one of the great things about drawing versus photography: it’s easy to take liberties and narrow a face and create instant hair extensions.

Yesterday we walked over to Yoyogi Park, a HUGE park (133 acres right next to the Meiji Jingu shrine grounds which are equally large… combined, they make a spectacular green oasis in the heart of the city) that includes various things that one might expect - bird sanctuary, rose garden, cycling path, sculptures, benches, shady places to sit, and a dog park.

Said dog park is divided into three areas based on dog weight. In the largest dog area (both the largest fenced enclosure and weightiest dogs), several dogs (including a lovely Bernese moutain dog) were wearing stretchy onesies. While it was cool to see dogs in pjs, even better was the display of high fashion in the mid-size canine zone.

There were a number of shetland sheepdogs and their owners hanging out together (not sure if they are a particularly popular breed or if it was a club of some sort) and a couple of the shelties were decked out in elaborate kimono-inspired outfits. I took many, many photos for reference and then, a bit later, sat at a coffee shop with my iPad to do the drawing for this letter. It’s MUCH easier to get proportions right when I use the photo as my starting reference point and then elaborate from there.

Before I inherited Dad’s iPad and Procreate program, I experimented with the DaVinciEye phone app, which was also super helpful and, bonus, you can use it with a sketchbook/piece of paper.

Dear Nikki - January 4

Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far ahead as the car’s headlights shine, but you can make the whole trip that way.

I read this quote from E.L. Doctorow somewhere recently and at the time I thought how much it applied to the work we are doing together on the thriller. But now I see that it also applies equally to our drawing collaboration.

Today I stood at my kitchen window and drew part of the windowsill scene as well as part of what I saw out that window. The glass jug on the right is full of shells, a pearl necklace, rings, stones, and other treasure. A project for another day, but I love the shape of it, so I put it in, a glass object (made from sand) beside the raw materials of sand (rocks) and a dried-up type of sea urchin called a sand dollar. Before I started drawing this still life, I had not made the connection between the objects. I had not truly seen them.

The four little stones came from a local beach, where I was trying to encourage my grandchildren to choose a few special, tiny rocks instead of filling their pockets with small boulders. I've now named them (the rocks, not the children) Communicate, Collaborate, Connect and Commit. They represent what I want to do in 2025, and I'm sure that they don't care that my grasp on perspective is, shall we say, rudimentary.