A fun workshop about illustration with Rebecca Otowa

Date: Saturday, February 8, 2014
Time: 15:00-17:00 (followed by an early dinner for those able to join us)
Fee: 1,000 yen for JAT/SWET members; 1,500 for non-members
Place: Venture Dream Office 
Address: Office One Shijo-Karasuma, Kyoto (2 mins from Hankyu Karasuma Stn and Subway Shijo Stn) 京都市下京区鶏鉾町480
Reservations: SWET Kansai Spend an afternoon with Rebecca Otowa (author and illustrator of At Home in Japan, 2009, and My Awesome Japan Adventure, 2013) enjoying the relationships between pictures and words. YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE AN ARTIST! As a writer, translator or editor – no matter if your specialty is fiction, non-fiction, or poetry – you picture words as you write. There will be something in this workshop to stimulate all wordsmiths.

Activities include:

• Introduction: Thinking about Words and Pictures
• Round Robin Cartoons --  Create a 4-panel cartoon with other workshop members
• Lettershapes and Wordshapes – What does “A” look like to you? Can you draw the word “table” so it looks like a table?
• Which 1000 Words are Worth a Picture? – Writing a description from a picture --  which details would you include?
• The Dramatic Moment – Pick the moment you would like to see illustrated, and how. (featuring Suzanne Kamata’s story, “Hawaiian Hips”)
• ... and more!

Join us for some old-fashioned pencil work and fun! Contact George or Andrew at SWET Kansai (kansai[at]swet.jp) to register and receive a PDF of “Hawaiian Hips” to read beforehand.

 

Rebecca Otowa was born in Southern California, U.S.A. in 1955 and spent her teenage years in Brisbane, Australia. Upon graduating with a BA (Hons.) in Japanese from the University of Queensland, she arrived in Kyoto in 1978 on a scholarship from the Japanese Government, studying and obtaining an MA in Buddhist Studies from Otani University. The year after graduation, she married the 19th generation scion of a 350-year-old farmhouse in the Shiga mountains. In 2009, Otowa authored and illustrated At Home in Japan, a collection of essays about her outer and inner life. In 2013, she released her self-illustrated children’s book, My Awesome Japan Adventure, describing the adventures of an 11-year-old boy on a homestay trip in regional Japan. She continues to draw and paint and write in her spare time, and to grow vegetables and roses, read, and watch movies.

Read a SWET interview with Rebecca's about her latest book.

Thank you to Suzanne Kamata for allowing us to use her story in this workshop.