Adon Olam ~ Teapot no. 61 (561)

Adon Olam ~ Teapot no. 61 (561) ~ Tea with the Buddha babies

...Wondrous messengers that they are... 

Thank you, Yuki, thank you, Jesse, thank you, Bodhi,

 for coming through today; it's been a while.

© Nicole Raisin Stern

Colored pencil and black fountain pen ink on paper 

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Adon Olam: Hymn or Responsive Chant (by Reb Zalman Schacter-Shalomi)

You were cosmic LORD, YAH Malakh, before there even was a world
Then Your will all things did make, YAH Melekh we call You now.
Once when all things will cease to be YAH Yimlokh still true will be
You were, You are, eternally resplendent to infinity.
You alone, there are not two to join as friends, as lovers do.
Beginningless and without end You keep all one by plan and strength.
You are my GOD, REDEEMER, Life Protecting me in war, in strife.
My holy haven and my flag, my cup of health for what I lack.
Into Your hand I trust my breath, You breathe in me by night by day.
My body is Your tool, Your gift. With You as mine I'm not afraid.

Happy Year of the TIGER

© Nicole Raisin Stern

Watercolor and pen on Arches cold pressed paper. With Ganesha skate boarding.

Woo-Hoo

Teapots 10, 11, & 12

My little cha book is filling up.

Teapot no. 10 (210)

Watercolor and sumi brush pen in my handmade cha book.

Teapot no. 11 (211)

Paper cut outs glued into my handmade cha book.

Teapot no. 10 (210)

Green fountain pen ink (that looks aqua on the pink paper) and watercolored yellow spots.

Teapot 12 & 11 together

teapot nos. 8 & 9

Teapot no. 9 (209)
Sumi brush pen and watercolor in my handmade cha book.


Teapot no. 8 (208)
Fountain pen & colored pencil drawn inside my handmade cha book.


8 & 9 together in my handmade cha book.

View my newly started 100 Teapots Set 3.

teapot no. 5

Drawn with red fountain pen ink in my handmade cha book. [click on photo for enlarged view of drawing].

teapot no.4 & a taiko drawing

Teapot no. 4 (my 204th teapot) I drew with Crayola Crayons and a Kaimei sumi brush pen inside my handmade cha book (茶の本).



I drew the taiko drums (the writing of which is one of those redundancies, like saying let's vamos, since taiko actually means drum or drums) at taiko practice on Saturday. Drawing taiko, observing more skillful taiko players playing, and just being around the taiko will surely seep into me, as Basho suggests.

teapot no. 100 - team huddle

Finished my second set of 100 teapots.


Here are my helper pots, the models I used for many of my teapot drawings and paintings.

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Here are the two sets:
#1: 100 teapots. Dec. 22, 2005-Oct. 2, 2006.
#2: 100 more teapots. Dec. 8, 2006-Oct. 31, 2007.

teapot no. 99 - bring your cups!

See the nearly completed set here.

new 98

Here's teapot no. 98 with the handle that I forgot to make in the first version (scroll down to the post before this one).

teapot no. 97 and 98

Teapot no. 98


Teapot no. 97

teapot no. 96

Cut paper from a Japanese lunar calendar glued on paper with watercolor, sumi ink and brush.

getting closer!

Here's a legend to the brush characters:

土 earth
月 moon
茶 tea
心 heart/mind
水 water
火 fire
星 star
楽 joy

Click on picture to get a larger view.

ウーロン茶

Without opening your door,
you can open your heart to the world.
Without looking out your window,
you can see the essence of the Tao.

The more you know,
the less you understand.

The Master arrives without leaving,
sees the light without looking,
achieves without doing a thing.

~Lao Tze
Tao Te Ching: 47, translated by Stephen Mitchell

teapot no. 60

Drawn on a pink post-it note with pencil, then made sepia with iPhoto.

teapot no. 44

I painted teapot no. 44 this afternoon with acrylics on a piece of Walgreen's drawing paper. I stayed indoors in the relative cool of my house while the sun was baking the world outside (105ºF/41ºC). I wanted to paint with acrylics despite being completely out of white. To have some white in the picture, I decided to leave white space around everything. When I had almost finished, a titanium white tube appeared in my box of paints where I had previously looked and looked. So, I used some white at the end to touch up my white spaces and to soften some of the colors.

For the past few days I have been wondering whether making abstract art is something I will ever do. What is "abstract" anyway? Is something abstract when it gets farther away from realistic or representational, like that telephone game we play as children? I tend to draw and paint things that I see in front of me, or see in my imagination, and that are easily recognizable as an object even when not everyone can name the object. Some artists create feeling states with shapes, colors, and textures. The viewer may feel something in the paintings that I make, but the story in the drawing is usually the predominant feature. I'm not going to try to be abstract, especially since I don't really know what that means, but I am interested in experimenting.

The model for this painting was a watercolor of a teapot I painted several weeks ago (teapot no. 35) in my moleskine watercolor journal using a photograph of a teapot I liked on flickr. I added the round window with the stand of prickly pear and a mountain view. Here they are together:

teapot no. 40 x 3

Tonight I drew teapot no. 40 with my sumi Kaimei pen on a piece of brown paper bag and colored it in with Crayola crayons. The Japanese writing at the top of the page says nihon no kyuusu 日本の急須 which means "Japanese teapot". I modeled my teapot drawing after my friend ya ma's Japanese teapot photo. I like that particularly Japanese style of pot with the outstretched handle.

After scanning in the original teapot drawing, I noticed a crinkly line I didn't like (in the top drawing). I wanted to redo the scan to get rid of the crinkle, so I pressed down on the drawing with my hands as it scanned and got the middle version! That was a surprise. I hadn't expected to see my hands coming through the brown bag paper. The third version (bottom) is the result of pushing the magic "invert" button in my HP Photo Gallery software. Here are the first 39 teapots of my second set of 100 teapots.

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teapot no. 39 - Tea Sutra

Construction paper with sparkles (the red background, all the black paper, and the green tea in the tea cups); tea sutra gift wrap paper from 一保堂 (Ippo-Do) tea store in Japan; ivory color embroidery thread. I cut out the paper with a scissors and glued the pieces with glue stick. On the noren curtains are four variations of the character for tea in Japanese/Chinese: 茶 (cha).

teapot nos. 37 & 38

teapot no. 36

teapot no. 35

Modeled after this teapot photo by kuu_nel

teapot no. 34