The new desk calendar with my illustration for 2015 has been released!!

Being titled ‘Animals in the Forest”, 12 wild animals are featured in every months.

Well…This type of design was completely new for me, and yes, I enjoyed the work so much.

Actually, construction design was done by Satoshi Maeda, my husband and ex-architect.

His idea was to make it simple enough to avoid the complicated process to construct it by the users. So it is designed to be just folded in its distribution, and the users only have to pull the front frame facing and just a bit to secure by enforcing the folded lines to make it stand up.

The publishing company of this calendar offered to collaborate with Satoshi, it was completely out of my idea at the beginning, but it appeared to be a nice idea, as we could discuss anytime at home for the design.

I feel most happy every time I get the final product that I have been working for.

Thanks so much for all the people’s honest efforts involved in this project!!

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mayumi maeda 2012

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Last year I went a zoo in Tokyo to sketch some little mice, and met a Japanese squirrel along. He had a beautiful orange summer fur on legs and I was given to awake about the beauty of Japanese squirrel. Since then, for me, Japanese squirrel became one of the most ‘picturesque’ creature.

So, I have been working for the next picture book from last summer.  The text and rough skethces have been almost done, and I have started to work for main drawings.

Every contexts relating to the animals makes me sometimes very moved…  Just a simple story makes me in tears, for example about a dog named ‘Bamse’ , attended norwegian navy and behaved so bravely when his battleship was under attack by Nazis Germans, gave a great courage to all of the soldiers, who were fighting together.

By the way, here is my favorite phrase from a poem by Emily Dickinson:

If I can ・・・

・・・　help one fainting Robin

Unto his nest again

I shall not live in vain.

(F982)

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