I have a friend, who was my junior-high classmate. She is so keen about chinese astrology.(She has her family origin in Taiwan, maybe that is the reason). She is a pharmacist, and scientifically intelligent, but also have an excellent intuition,  in a kind of super-natural way, i.e. She recognised her husband’s cancer in the very first stage in her dreaming…She is my ‘Sherman’, too.

At the very end of the last year, she told me that 2014 will be a very nice year for me. And her prophesy is already seeming to become true. Because I am so much enjoying to work for illustrations just from the very beginning of this year.

These are still the dummy works for 2015 calendar design, but it arose me quite a pure happiness to work, just fun to draw and paint, which we tend to lose in working as a professional.

This primitive happiness in art-work making is most valuable and precious, than the other goodness ever, such as the successful achievement as a business and so on.

↓Girls from Bretagne

↓Winter

↓Nicola Tesla, from ‘Great Scientists’

↓Squirrel

As you might see, those series of works can be divided into 2 categories: 1 is for animals basically in their natural appearance. 2 is the dressed animals in human world activity. I myself cannot decide which way would be nice for the calendar. We will have a talk with our publisher after 10 days, then i hope the decision will be out.

Tags: Art.

The lovely exhibition is opened toay at LINNET store, and will keep going until 24th July. This is a small display of sewing and drawing works by Vejas,  a 13 years old boy who lives in Quebec in Canada.

It was in last year that I received the first letter from Vejas. Nice drawings and a hand work was enclosed.

He was a on-line customer for LINNET, but we never imagined he was a 13 years old.

He wrote in his letter ‘ though I am a guy, I like sewing and hand made’ and also he told that he has Lithuanian origin.

I wrote back to him that I was so impressed by his works and drawings, and I don’t think it is funny if boy likes handmade and sewing, as LINNET is working with some ‘male’ artists  for sewing and handmade, because they are so talented. I thought Vejas is also very creative and he can be a creator when he is older. and also I asked him whether he have been to Lithuania, as Lithuania is very famous in Japan for its flax and linen production.

So, He wrote me back again saying he have been to Lithuania, for a funny reason that was for his grandpa’s dentistry!  I loved to read his story in Lithuania, it made me feel I was in a kind of American novel.

That was how we have started exchanging letters.

Gradually, my impression has grown bigger and bigger for those works by Vejas.  So I asked him if he agrees to display his works in LINNET store, as a small exhibision titled ‘the letters from Vejas’ and he agreed.

Those works are lovely, created by young hand of 13 years old, but also those ideas have enough quality to inspire us, fully grown-ups.

Additionally, his works and thoughts reminds me how I felt and thought when I was same age as Vejas.  Those feelings and thoughts are my core, unchanged trunk. Now it has  many shoots, branches, leaves, flowers and fruits, and the trunk has grown more thicker and steady.   I feel we are so close, beyond generation difference, that I enjoyed to talk with him by my ‘trunk’.

(above:one of my most favorite of Vejas’s drawings  ’Forlorn Bunny’

Vejas loves Japanese cartoons(manga) and told me that one day he would like to visit Japan.

I believe he can be a creator, maybe cartoonist or picture book writer&artist, if he would like to be, and I eagerly hope he would.

(Above left: Drawing titled ‘What to make today?’.

Tags: Art, kids.