Digital Painting

I always get excited when I find a new medium I enjoy working with.  The past couple of days I've been messing around with digital painting in a program called Artrage.  I can't get over how bad the name is but I really love using it.  I've had it on my iPad for ages and I'd kind of forgotten about it, but I saw an iPad billboard the other day which featured it so I decided to give it another go.  We were in Manchester this week so I had some time on the train to play with it and I really enjoyed it, so I got the Mac version when I got home.  I really love the paint textures, they are really nice and realistic.  It's also really nice not to worry about washing brushes or trying to get a scan to look like the real thing.  Plus there's the wonderful advantage of the undo button. 

Also, how great is the weather in London right now? Don't get me wrong because I love winter, but prior to this week we had a month of rain EVER DAY.  It was hard not to daydream about the sun...now here it is!

Mike Viola in a Rocket with a Peacock

Just finished up this poster for Mike Viola.  He's one of my favourite artist so I'm pretty excited that he's playing in London, I've seen him in LA, New York, Copenhagen, Tokyo but never in the city I live in!  Also excited that I got to do a poster for it!  It's very different from my usual style but I really like it. 

New cards!

I have some new cards!  I wanted to wait until I could put them in the shop to show you but I'm too excited!  I'm just waiting on the envelopes for them to come in, should only be a couple of days.  I really love how they've turned out.. I hope you like them too!  

>> edit: these guys are in my shop now!

Hanami

I've finally got around to looking through all my cherry blossom photos.  I've posted probably way too many here, but enjoy!  These were taken in the beautiful Shinjuku Gyoen.  I've stayed in Shinjuku a few times but I never knew this beautiful park existed.  A friend took me there at the start of my trip, just as the cherry blossoms were starting to bloom.  We went back a week later and the whole park was popping with blossoms.  I've always wanted to see the cherry blossoms in Japan so we were so lucky that our trip happened to coincide with sakura season, even if you plan it sometimes the blossoms won't come out to play, so I'm very happy we got to see them.

Tokyo Snippets

Blimey I have had an absolutely mental week!  Husband's label is releasing a new record next week and I've been working my butt off getting the preorders shipped.  Just got the last of them off and I've come up for some air so I thought I'd show you some highlights from my Tokyo photos.  Next time I'll do a post with some photos of the beautiful cherry blossoms we saw.  Now if you'll excuse me I'm off to collapse in  a heap.

(click em to make em bigger, they look better!)

Jetlag

Back from Tokyo.  It was great.  Really great.  I bought so many pens.  You have no idea.  So many pens.

Unfortunately I spent the whole time trying to get my body in to Tokyo time.  I think I succeeded about the day before we left.  Now I'm back in London and my body doesn't know what the heck is going on.  I thought this self portrait rather captured how I'm feeling.

On a good note, we fluked it and managed  to be there for Hanami.  It was beautiful.  I got a load of great photos which I will share with you soon!  In the mean time, what day is it?

Eating Vegetarian In Japan

Well the time has come! Finally after three years of on again off again plans to go back to Japan, I'm flying out to Tokyo on Friday!  Very excited.

I've been to Japan twice before, on tour with my old band.  I really love it there, the people are so nice, everything looks amazing, the packaging for everything is super cute, the streets feel safe even at night... 

My biggest and basically only worry when I'm there is finding vegetarian food.  Most people, in Tokyo at least have a fairly good understanding of English, so you don't run in to too many problems.  "Vegetarian" however is not really understood, nor is the concept of not eating any animal parts.  Something may be a vegetable dish, but cooked in fish or pork stock, a Japanese person might tell you this is a "vegetarian" dish without understanding that the stock matters.

A few days ago I received a parcel from a Japanese friend, it was a great book with lots of pictures and diagrams with Japanese and English captions.  Cute cartoons obviously, and all the necessary info you might need to get yourself out of any jam... you can always point at the pictures!

My friend also included a hand written note that I can carry with me, it has three essential questions/statements in English and Japanese that I can show at a restaurant, should any confusion arrise.  Having this sheet has totally put my mind at ease and I'm sure it will be very helpful!

I've put a high-res printable version below so that if you happen to find yourself a veggie in Japan, you can use it too!  I hope this blog post reaches people searching for help finding vegetarian food over there! Please let me know if you find it helpful.

københavn!

Went to Denmark on the weekend, for business mostly, but we got a rainy afternoon of sight seeing on Sunday.  Copenhagen was great plus we went up to Helsingor, a pretty sea side town where you can see Sweden across the water!  Must go back and see more soon!