This was drawn with a Japanese fountain pen, Japanese ink, and painted with Japanese watercolor. To be specific - I used Holbein watercolor and Platinum Carbon Black in a Pilot Falcon. This trio is perfect for me.
Flying Robot in the Sky, watercolor. I used my new Holbein paints. (I love them.) Drawn with a Pilot Falcon SEF using Platinum Carbon Black. A trifecta of Japanese paint, pen, and ink.
Imperfect Lines, Honest Presence
This sketch is not perfect—and that’s exactly why it’s alive. The bold figure, the dissolving hat, the tilted chair: all of it feels unfinished, fleeting, caught in motion. It’s what the Japanese call wabi-sabi—finding beauty in the imperfect, the impermanent, the incomplete.
But there’s something deeper here too. A quick sketch is not just what the eye records. It’s what the soul permits. To draw without fixing, without polishing, is to admit the world will not hold still for us. Life slips past. The lines break off. And yet, somehow, the essence remains.
When you sketch this way, you are not the master of the moment—you are its guest. The pencil does not carve permanence; it pays attention. The act of drawing becomes an act of being present, of honoring what is already vanishing.
So here’s a challenge: grab a pencil and sketch someone near you in sixty seconds. Do not erase. Do not perfect. Let the lines falter. When you finish, ask yourself: What truth did the imperfection reveal?
Perhaps presence itself is the real art.
“Hikyaku - literally "fleet feet" or "flying feet." These running messengers played a critical role in delivering items and messages, given that in Japan's mountainous terrain, other modes of transportation, like horses or carriages, weren't very practical.”
Outside my drawing table window are straight and weeping birches. We lost one of the birch trucks and, tragically, a beautiful OLD Japanese maple during an ice storm a few years ago. The third trunk is still in my mind's eye.
Old drawing that I had contributed to a charity art book for Japanese tsunami relief efforts. Feel free to follow my facebook for additional updates! http://www.facebook.com/sonialaiart
Portrait practice. Used reference photo of Sakaguchi Kentaro https://sparklesby-me.tumblr.com/post/180692882506/sakaguchi-kentaro-for-elle-japan-jan2019
Every day in 2017 I drew in a Moleskine Japanese (Accordion Fold) Album (pocket size) with the goal of completing one continuous drawing all year. I filled up nearly six complete sketchbooks, completing a drawing that is 5.5 inches high and more than 600 inches wide. Now, what do I do with it?
