Demonstration Art

The primary focus this week is on haiga, paintings with haiku poems included. Frogs have been added because they are mentioned in Bashō's Old Pond haiku and not because I have included one in my demonstration painting based on it. For those who would like to test their skills on painting frogs, however, I have included some frog sketches below.

For those who want to practice their calligraphy, here is the kanji character for frog (kaeru).

My demonstration painting this week is based on Bashō's haiku, The Old Pond. As a reminder, here is the English translation of the poem.

Old pond,

Frog jumps in,

The sound of water.

I used a kanji script version of the poem in the painting. It may be hard for those of you who aren't used to that form of writing to make out what it should look like, so I did a more straight forward version to assist you.

It is your decision what kind of writing to use in your painting. You can attempt to duplicate my script version, try the more straight forward version above, or do something else. English perhaps?

Notice the absence of a frog in my painting though his spirit surely lingers on.