8th August 2022 Dr Beena

Hello everyone, I hope all are fine and busy with life😊. I have titled this painting “Kawaii”. The original definition came from Lady Murasaki’s 11th Century novel, “The Tale of Genji”. In Japan, kawaii means cute; some examples of cuteness are in handwriting, manga, anime, Hello Kitty and Pikachu.

In this class assignment, we had to compose features into a landscape. I chose to put that little girl and that species of mushrooms. In addition, I am not sure why I wanted the girl to be smaller than the mushrooms 🤷‍♀️🙄. I feel the girl set out to walk on a sunny day and took shelter under the mushrooms when the rain started. This painting is in watercolour. For the background, I used the wet-on-wet technique. I masked the girl and the mushrooms with masking liquid to preserve the whiteness of paper to paint on other colours.

However, I received many responses when I sent out my Friday greetings. Cute seems to be one of the main ones. The other was “Alice in Wonderland”. Now I never thought of the second one🤔. I painted that girl because she looked so cute😍. Hence my reason for this strange word “Kawaii”. I learnt something new today😊.

I thought many would think this was a rather childish painting. Nevertheless, I am thrilled most liked it. I sometimes wonder, will the child in us ever disappear? I hope not. I feel curiosity stems from that thirst for knowledge we have as children. Once that dissipates, then life is no longer exciting😒. Please share your thoughts on this, 🙏🙏🙏😊.