Torn together

Happy Thanksgiving! This week I’m especially grateful for the gift of right livelihood—creative work that nourishes me and my community. Deepest thanks to you, my customers and fans, who make that possible. In gratitude, I’m offering 15% off everything in my Makino Studios shop thru Sunday with code THANKS22 (details below).

Here’s a glimpse at how I created a recent piece. A few years ago, I tore my left rotator cuff, which was followed by a painful case of “frozen shoulder.” After a physical therapy appointment, I took a walk along the Mad River bluffs overlooking the ocean, admiring the windswept trees. That inspired the following poem:

to love this body
just as it is
twisted shore pines

I decided to create a collage with the haiku, and started with a rough sketch. Next I searched through my collection of painted and embellished papers. Earlier I had tried painting a sunset sky for another piece, which didn’t work at all. But that rejected sheet turned out to be perfect for this piece. I also used washi paper, an old letter and some pages from a copy of Moby-Dick.

After much trial and error, I chose the papers I wanted, then tore them into pieces and laid them out, tweaking my composition until it felt right.

I tore and glued on the main pieces, including the black branches of the shore pine. But how to create all those needles? I knew it would drive me insane to collage each one. Eventually I realized I was trying to obey an imaginary rule that using pen and ink in a collage would be “cheating.” Once I let go of that unconscious restriction, I drew in the needles with a fine point pen.

Voilà! The finished haiga (art with haiku), is 11x14, made with acrylic paint, archival ink, paper and glue on cradled birch panel. (The words were added digitally using my custom brush-painted font and do not appear on the original.) © Annette Makino 2022

From uncomfortable beginnings, this mixed media collage emerged as the star of my collection this year. In an informal poll of friends and family, it won the cover spot on my 2023 calendar. (There is also a greeting card version that reads simply, “sending much love.”)

Sending wishes for much love and abundance this Thanksgiving!

“to love this body” was first published in Frogpond, the journal of the Haiku Society of America.

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Makino Studios News

Thanksgiving sale: Use promo code THANKS22 at checkout for 15% off everything in the Makino Studios shop except original art. Good for first-class shipping within the U.S. Only one promo code per order. Sale ends at midnight this Sunday, Nov. 27.

Made in Humboldt fair: The “Made in Humboldt” event at Pierson Garden Shop in Eureka, CA runs through Friday, Dec. 24. This is the only fair where you can buy my calendars, books, prints and boxed notecards this season. There are 250 participating vendors, all local.

Ecuador travel: My husband and I will be in Ecuador and the Galápagos Dec. 3-20! We are visiting our son, who is studying there this semester. Our house sitter will be packaging and mailing orders in my absence, but they may take a little longer to get out the door, so order early!

2023 mini-calendars: My calendars of art and haiku make great holiday gifts! They feature 12 colorful Asian-inspired collages with my original haiku. $12 each.

Water and Stone: My award-winning book of art and haiku includes 50 watercolor paintings with my original poems. Cost is $25. You can find it online here, on Amazon and in select local Humboldt stores. 

Cards: Holiday, birthday, sympathy or everyday… right now there are more than 70 Makino Studios card designs to choose from. I also have five different notecard sets, including two holiday designs.

Art prints: Blake’s Books in McKinleyville and Humboldt’s Hometown Store in Ferndale both carry a selection of my matted art prints, ready for gifting. They are among the local stores that carry my books, calendars, notecards and single cards.

Holiday shipping deadline: The US Postal Service advises that for first-class packages to arrive by Dec. 25, they should be shipped by Saturday, Dec. 17.

A peek at my new lettering process

“deep river” is 11x14. This collage features three coho salmon swimming upstream, back to the place they were born. This piece is the January art for my 2022 calendar of art and haiku. As with all my collages, the papers start out white, and I then paint them with lightfast acrylic paint.

One fun detail is that the phrase "deep, deep river" appears on a scrap of a musical score. You can also see some prints I made from ferns, plus mango paper from Thailand, washi paper from Japan, newsprint, and even a toilet paper wrapper! I added the haiku using my Yuki font.

A new graduation card version reads, “congratulations—onward and upward!”

© Annette Makino 2021

There was a lot of interest in my last post, “How a collage is born.” So today I want to go behind the scenes again and share a bit about the process for my lettering. 

For my paintings and collages, I typically make one version of a piece that includes a haiku and another with the words for a greeting card. I normally leave the words off the original. 

I used to brush-paint each haiku or phrase using sumi ink, an ink stone and a bamboo brush. If you’ve ever tried painting or lettering using a brush and ink, you know it’s a delicate art with no room for error. So it would usually take me several tries to get right.

Then I would scan the words, edit out the white background, and digitally add the text to my art. This was a slow and painstaking process—with uneven results. 

Traditionally you make sumi ink by grinding an ink stick in an ink stone. Photo by Brandi Easter.

Here I am painting the letters for my custom font using sumi ink and a fine bamboo brush. I chose the best version of each letter for the font.

That changed last spring, when Arcata-based graphic designer and tech wiz Gabe Schneider at Sight Study created a custom font for me using my brush-painted letters. He used an extension for Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop called FontSelf, which turns lettering into OpenType fonts. He fine-tuned the spaces between letters (kerning and tracking), and even figured out a clever way to make a bold version.

A detail of my custom Yuki font based on the letters I painted above.

There are still situations when I will hand-paint my words. Sometimes I want a special look, as with the big section headings for my book, Water and Stone. Or sometimes a customer buys an original painting and wants the haiku on it. But I’m always nervous that I will ruin the painting with a typo or smear—it’s been known to happen!

With my new brush font, I can quickly and easily type the words for my haiku and greeting cards. I’ve used it for slide show presentations of my art and poetry, and it also works beautifully for the 365 dates on my calendar. 

Is it “cheating”? Using my custom font may seem less Zen than painting each letter by hand in the traditional way, but it also creates less aggravation. And isn’t that actually more Zen? Plus, I get elegant, consistent results in a fraction of the time—giving me more time to write haiku and make art.

A quick Google search for “Asian brush font” returns 34 million results—but none of them are mine. I named my font Yuki, which means snow in Japanese. It also happens to be my middle name. I say let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

rice paper moon
pine trees brush
the inky sky

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Makino Studios News

My 2022 calendar uses my Yuki font for the dates—something I would never do by hand.

New card designs: I’ve created several brand-new card designs, including three birthday cards and one for graduation, and I’ve updated others with new words. Browse the whole card collection, including Valentine’s Day cards.

Sale on 2022 mini-calendars: My 2022 mini-calendars, featuring 12 colorful Asian-inspired collages with my original haiku, are now on sale for $9.99 (from $12.00). I like to think of these as a small rotating gallery of art.

My first book review: A new review of Water and Stone: Ten Years of Art and Haiku in Haiku Canada Review says, “The images in Annette Makino’s collection are lovely, the prose is limpid, and the haiku seem effortlessly to verbalize how we are part of the world.” You can find my book here, on Amazon and in select Humboldt stores. It is 8x10, perfect bound, full color, and 124 pages. $24.99.