Sekka's Mythical Beings

         Kamisaka Sekka (Japan, 1866-1942) was an artist who spanned the movement of Japanese art toward modernism.  The Japanese government sent him to Glasgow to study western arts, where he was much influenced by the Art Nouveau movement.  His work is more simplified and stylized than the styles of Japanese art that came before.  His masterpiece was the three volumes of Momoyogusa, which is sometimes translated A World of Things, and sometimes Flowers of a Hundred Worlds.  The latter is more poetic, but I’m guessing the former is more accurate a translation, and is certainly a more accurate description.  The 60 pieces depict some flowers, but also other plants and animals, views of nature and of daily life, objects, people, scenes from literature, and even a few mythical characters.  These last are what I have for you today.

        We have to start with the dragon, of course!  This is very dramatic, showing only the head and one taloned foot looming out of inky grey cloud.  The eyes and claws are gilded for extra punch, but it’s hardly necessary.

        Next up is another stormy character: Raijin, god of thunder.  He’s following his standard iconography by beating on his drums, while his hair flies wildly.  Again, you can see that this is relatively simple with large areas of flat color compared with traditional Japanese woodblock prints - but it’s still quite complicated compared with anything that uses a single block and a single color of ink.  (I mentioned Raijin’s companion thunder beast the raiju here.)

        And finally we have the hakuhō, translated as “white phoenix,” although I can’t find any information about what, if anything, this bird’s mythical powers might be.  Lots of fantastic birds seem to be translated as “phoenixes” without necessarily having anything in common with the phoenix proper, so I’d love to find out more about this one.  At the very least it’s certainly very beautiful.  I like the faint pattern of the wood grain in the background, and the delicate fluff of the bird’s tail feathers.

        If you want to see one of Sekka’s non-fantasy pieces, I featured his “Seven Herbs of Early Spring” in a previous post (or follow the link to the Cleveland Museum of Art in the credits to see lots of pieces.)

[Pictures: Ryū (Dragon), color woodcut by Kamisaka Sekka, 1909-10;

Raijin (God of Thunder), color woodcut by Kamisaka Sekka, 1909-10;

Hakuho (White Phoenix), color woodcut by Kamisaka Sekka, 1909-10 (All images from Cleveland Museum of Art).]

C.W. Taylor’s Textures

         I did a previous post on wood engravings by Charles William Taylor (U.K., 1878-1960) nine years ago, but today I saw a few more, and this time what really struck me about them was how everything in the image is built out of patterns of texture.  As I’m currently working on a landscape piece myself, I’m really studying how Taylor uses detailed patterns of strokes to make his layers of multiple trees, his water, his ground…

        First, however, is a small view of Colchester, and the light in this piece blows me away!  There's a contrast between dark shadows and light so brilliant that it washes out St. Nicholas’s spire in a sparkling shower.  And it’s all done with the texture of lines and crosshatching.  Look at the variety of patterns across the sky to see how Taylor has made a gradient of light, plus another pattern on the church, and contrasted with the yet different pattern on the building beside it.  (By the way, this lovely church was apparently demolished in 1955.)

        Somewhat more typical of Taylor’s work are the two pastoral landscapes, but this view of deer in Epping Forest also has amazing light.  Look how the deep shadow of the huge tree is an absence of grass and leaf litter, and how the light glints across the water and illuminates the outlines of the deer.  Look at all the different patterns of strokes - vertical, horizontal, diagonal, short, long, curved, straight - and how they define plants and differentiate the areas.  Instead of outlines around areas, these textures create the entire scene.

        The final piece looks like dusk is falling, and again Taylor’s mastery of light and shadow gives us everything we need to interpret the scene.  In my previous post I praised the sense of spaciousness Taylor brought to his landscapes, but with these examples the light brings a sense of intimacy, and a feeling that we have been offered a portal into a singular, enchanted time and place where the light happened to fall in just this extraordinary way, which Taylor has managed to capture in black ink on white paper.

[Pictures: Colchester, wood engraving by Charles William Taylor, (Image from Art UK);

March in Essex or Epping Forest (title given differently in two places), wood engraving by Taylor, 1920s-30s (Image from National Gallery of Art);

Wickford, wood engraving by Taylor, (Image from Art UK).]

Ghosts and Other News

         I’m excited to announce that my flash story “Hoarding Ghosts” was published today in MetaStellar.  Please head straight on over there and read it, and of course when you finish my story, check out all the other amazing pieces they’ve published.  (One funny note: if you notice a couple of words in square brackets, they’re an accidental relic of my own editing process that I apparently failed to clean up before submission, and they failed to clean up before publishing.  So you get just a little glimpse under the hood with that!)

        In other news, I’m off to Readercon Conference on Imaginative Literature tomorrow, and here’s my schedule.  You can see that with a solo reading, a solo kaffeeklatsch, and a solo lecture, I’ve been given more opportunities than usual to sit by myself in an empty room feeling foolish!  Ha!  But of course I’m actually very excited about all of this, so here’s the usual guide to related posts…

Alice in Wonderland

        Words of the Month - O Frabjous Words - featuring words invented by Lewis Carroll

        Reading Alice Aloud - and why my children didn’t appreciate Alice as much as I do.

        Words of the Month - Presupposition Triggers - including a famous example from Alice in Wonderland

        Alice, Irene, and Dorothy - comparing a few girls from classic early childrens’ fantasy

The Fantastic Bestiary

        A to Z 2019 - an entire alphabet of creatures, excerpts, snippets, and behind-the-scenes tidbits from On the Virtues of Beasts of the Realms of Imagination

        To learn about All the Creatures, try the label “mythical creatures” in the sidebar (230 posts and counting)

        Guess that Medieval Beast - the game that challenges you to think like a medieval illuminator (plus my Birds of a Feather game, just because it comes up with the same tag; but you can scroll past that one if you want!)

        See all the main creatures in my own bestiary here.

Speculative Pets

        Animal Companions - in which I lay out all you need to know about pets in spec fic

        Words of the Month - Petting Our Pets - etymology of pet-related words in English

        Seller of Cupids - in case you wish to acquire an unconventional pet

        Pokémon Go - the ultimate in catching all the fantasy pets

        In other news of publication, I’ve just had a poem accepted, but it won’t come out until fall 2027.  I’ve got stories coming in two anthologies that also won’t be out until 2027.  Of course I’m very pleased about having my work selected, but people, I have to tell you, I do not have the patience for this!  At least I don’t have to wait so long for gratification with my art: my piece “Robin’s Nest” is up now at a new Art Walk in Dedham, MA.

[Pictures: MetaStellar cover art by Oscar Ramirez (Image from MetaStellar);

photos by AEGNydam, 2026.]

Summer Heat

         Here are a few block prints that capture today’s summer heat.  These are linoleum block prints painted with watercolor, by Leslie Evans, and the acrostics within them are by Steven Schnur.  All the yellows and warm greens really give a sense of sunny days and sultry evenings, and from the comfort of my relatively cool desk, I can appreciate the lush garden outside.  This year  I’m not growing zucchini and I don’t even like eggplant, but I do like this print of veggies growing in the sun-warmed soil.  (My own garden is not nearly so inspiring - this morning I discovered that almost all of my tomatoes and blueberries have disappeared before they had even begun to ripen.  That’s just not fair!)

        On the other hand, my shasta daisies do look just like this second piece, complete with the occasional dragonfly, and they are indeed delightfully cheerful, just like little sunshines.

        This evening I’ll be sitting outdoors and it will be very hot indeed, but the glow and flash will be provided not by fireflies or (hopefully) lightning, but by the annual fireworks display.

        I’ve featured a few more lino prints by Leslie Evans before, in posts Young Youth Year and Melting Snow.

        If you have a garden or some pots, how are they growing?  And what summer traditions do you treasure?

[Pictures: Zenith, hand-colored linoleum block print by Leslie Evans from SPRING: An Alphabet Acrostic by Steven Schnur, 1999;

Daisy and Night, hand-colored linoleum block prints by Evans from SUMMER: An Alphabet Acrostic by Schnur, 2001.]