This is the work I do monthly,  the cover art&text on ‘Tsubame no Ouchi’ (means: Sparrow’s House), which is the annex leaflet  for picture books published by Froebel-Kan Co.,Ltd.

This July issue is offering a simple recipes to make a herb tea jelly, with camomile or mint.

It is to be printed in 2 colours, but unfortunately I am not very good at working for pictures in 2 colours…  Well, actually I can draw it in black and the other colour off course, though incapable by my daily use materials-watercolours with colour pencils.

At first I tried several ways to maintain my aiming quality with softness, but finally I found it better to work with my usual materials for full colour art works, then to ask my art director to ‘divide’ the colour to print it using just 2 colour inks.

And it worked very successfully!

I am so delighted about the results, as those printed images come out in excellent quality far more than I expected. Additionally, it seems getting nicer and nicer month by month.(You can see the above image is printed just in 2 colours- blue and orange.)

Encouraged by this experience, I am now thinking that it might be nice to make a picture book in 2 colour printings.

The excellent teamwork made me awakened to get the new idea, which I have never thought of before.

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This is an image of flax scutchers. I have sketched them from the old belgian photos in ‘Flax in Flanders‘.

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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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