Not surprisingly, it turns out, watercolour sketches of pets or children make good お土産 みやげ (omiyage)。Strictly speaking, it's omiyage for me—a souvenir of my travels, because I get to keep the experience of making and presenting the gift, both via memory and with photography, as you see here.
Yuki—graphite, watercolour, approximately 4x6" 140lb/300gsm cold press paper; photographed PP6, 12May2025
From the host's point of view, it's 手土産, てみやげ temiyage (note the 手、 te, or ‘hand’ kanji, instead of hiragana お which is a sort of honorific), a gift brought by a guest, often a foodstuff or the like that is from their locality. Of course, people don't always have time to scout out a specialty, so train stations typically have shops with all sorts of nicely packaged, non-perishable items; macraroons, coming in lots of pretty pastels, are a good example, and sometimes you have the option of choosing an assortment.
The delightful patio on which I made this piece. So serene...Here you see my pencil holder, a waterbrush, my mini-altoids assortment of watercolours, and a 4x6 (postcard size) ‘Fluid Easy-Block’ edge bound water-colour paper. Chiemi-san also gave me some Japanese postcard watercolour paper she had lying about, which I absolutely adored—just a beautiful ivory colour, and who knows how old...? From the right edge of Yuki's portrait, I deduce it was made on this lovely vintage paper.
But I like to make little portraits, if I have enough time, typically by taking photo reference, and using my portable art kit, which you can see on the table here (the flowers were also a gift, because I love getting them, and, obviously, I also get to enjoy them, as here. (I am kind of selfish, sadly...) This one is of Yuki 雪/ゆき, or Snow; thus her name is depicted in the upper left, and a snow crystal in the lower right.
To be frank, while the actual painting of the cat isn't too bad, the kanji and snow crystal are dreadful, but what can you do? As art, it's a failure, but as a little memento, perfectly adequate in conveying how much I appreciated Chiemi-san taking my sister and me in. Even knowing we were sick!
triple portrait of Yuki, can you spot all three versions? That's their dining room table I've covered with chaos, by the way. So kind! PP6, unaltered.
I had such a lovely time—a room to retreat to if I needed to sleep or relax while I recovered from a mild cold, space to spread out and make art when I had the energy to be up, without expectation to do anything. I think Chiemi-san felt a bit bad she was not more able to “entertain” me, but I was so perfectly content to laze around and make these little sketches.
Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.
