stuartayre

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The climactic scene of Japanese folktale The Grateful Crane, as interpreted by @stuartayre.

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The birth of Momatorō, as rendered by the very talented @stuartayre for our series on classic Japanese fairy tales.

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The Great Buddhas of Kamakura and Nara by @stuartayre.

Painting Japan’s Great Buddhas

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The good people at Nippon.com asked me to draw a couple of illustrations for a Japanese fairy tale (Princess Kaguya). Please take a peek if you have a spare moment. ニッポンドットコッムさんからご依頼を頂いてかぐや姫のイラストを描かせて頂きました。アップされたので是非見てもらえたら嬉しいです。

Scenes from Japanese folktale Kaguyahime illustrated by Stuart Ayre.

You can read the story of Princess Kaguya here.

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I did a couple of illustrations for Nippon.com

A classic Japanese fairy tale with illustrations by @stuartayre.

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Happy New Year!

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The Kamo River and the Takano River coming together in Kyoto 鴨川と高野川の合流点

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Thank you for the article, Nippon.com

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Sketch of a police officer watching over things at the kōban (police box) sat at the bottom of Kudanzaka (formerly Iidazaka) 

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Sketch of noodle resto underneath the tracks at Shinbashi St. 新橋駅の高架下のそばうどん屋さんのスケッチ

I love Shinbashi in Tokyo. It's a part of town that hasn't changed much for decades. Bullet trains and other trains are rumbling overhead, lots of pigeons are flying under the tracks, and the steam from the vent of the noodles place finds its way to the sky between the train lines. The longer I stand here, the more the zebra crossings and electric wires look like noodles.

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Painting of the Great Buddha of Kamakura

I love this place and spent two days painting this on site. There were lots of school groups. (The person with the red flag on the left was leading a class of school girls, and the elementary school kids in yellow hats on the right were about to climb the steps and go inside the Buddha). I heard some kids chatting about whether the Buddha was alive or not (there were passionate arguments on both sides) and whether anyone would be able to fit inside (one kid was convinced it was impossible).

There were lots of happy tourists, too. The non-Japanese tourists seem to like to strike a pose before the Buddha, whereas the Japanese visitors generally waft the smoke from the incense burner onto themselves and then pray.

Lastly, an elderly lady, who must have been in her eighties, mentioned she'd not been here since her schooldays.

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The original text for the translation I’m working on this week has been updated a few times since I started it on Monday. It’s quite a challenge to keep track of everything.

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秋葉原の魚 Fish in Akihabara

夕べの秋葉原。(川沿いのカフェバーで雨宿りをしていた間に描いた絵) 雨の中、高校生やビジネスパーソンが傘を挿して駅方向に向かっていた。橋の下に流れる川の魚が雨音に喜んでいたかな。 Akihabara yesterday evening (I drew this while sheltering from the heavy rain in a cafe-bar by the river.) High school students and business people had their umbrellas up while heading towards the station. I wonder if the fish were enjoying the sound of the rain.

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I went sketching in Yurakucho (in Tokyo) last night, which has a unique buzz in the evening with all the workers pouring out of the offices into nearby watering holes and trains. I saw this guy praying at a shrine near the station--I wonder what he was praying for. I also noticed the lamps on either side of the shrine are similar to the one outside of the pub on the left. Incidentally, the tree on the right was taken from The Starry Night.

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Tendon Tenya (tempura restaurant) in Kagurazaka, Tokyo          

I painted this after eating tempura here. The guy on the left was waiting for his tempura (watching the cook pour sauce over it before being served), and the guy on the right was drinking some hot barley tea after finishing his meal. The service is always superb here, even though it's super cheap.

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Five-Yen Coin and The Yellow House

I visited the site where The Yellow House once stood in Arles, France, to pay my respects to Van Gogh. He lived in many dwellings in his life, and The Yellow House is the most famous of these, even though not a brick of it remains. This is where Van Gogh established his “studio of the south” (to which Paul Gauguin was briefly the other member) and where the bloody ear incident occurred. He also drew and painted much of his most proficient and well-known work in this simple house, work which now hangs on choice walls in some of the world’s grandest galleries. In preparation for visiting the site, I took a 5-yen coin with me from Japan. I wanted to leave something at the site, and a 5-yen coin was an obvious choice for a few reasons: Van Gogh was intrigued by Japan, so a Japanese coin would have pleased him. The word for 5 yen in Japanese "go en" (五円) can also mean a connection or relation (御縁), and a five-yen coin is donated at Shinto shrines to establish a good connection with the shrine's diety. And, finally, I think that Van Gogh would have liked the 5-yen coin design, as it features agricultural imagery (water and rice), a subject he often painted, and it's the only coin in Japan with its value written only in Japanese (Van Gogh painted Japanese writing in a couple of his paintings). I pushed the coin as deeply as I could into the soil under the grass where the house once stood, hoping that it would remain there for some time.  

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神楽坂の雪道を歩いている親子 (ボードにガッシュ) Mother and daughter walking along a snowy road in Kagurazaka in Tokyo (gouache on board)