It’s a ten-days holiday here in Japan. I went to Atami today. I carried the newly bought iPad mini with me to see if it is a handy enough for outdoor sketch and coloring. I used to bring a holbein 24 cake watercolor set in backpack to do coloring. But always need to find somewhere to sit down and place my water bottle and rag, which is not handy at all. I was hoping with an iPad I could do more serious color drawing anywhere especially train and museum.
I got to know Atami when reading about Ishiguro Masakazu said he like to go to Atami when he is taking a break and he found many inspiration there (The hometown of Hotori in Soremachi have some scenery similar with Atami, I guess). During the production of Evangelion 2.0, when the story writing became hard, the main staff (Anno Hidiaki, Tsurumaki Kazuya, Masayuki, Sadamoto Yoshiyuki, Todoroki Ikki, et. al.) went to Atami for 3[?] days to do a focus discussion so that they could finish the plot in time. In the movie Yiyi (One and two) directed by Edward Yang. There is one scene shooting the birdview of the seaside walkway of Atami, where N.J. walked with his old-day lover. Sun has set down with some faint blue left in the atmosphere. There was a local grandma passing by and greeted them with “Konnichiwa”. I found it the most romantic scene in the movie.
So Atami has already become quite special to me even before I went there.
I arrived at 2pm. The main street was filled with tourists. There are endless sobaya and onnsen manju and shop selling dried fish along the road. Atami town is built on the mountain slope. The dense packing of Japanese building makes it like an interesting maze. Along the main road I could frequently spot some small stair path leading to unknown places, usually turned out to be a local temple or some quiet neighbourhood. I picked a spot with some old houses on the slope to do a scenery drawing on the iPad.
I used the app called sketches. I like how it make the scratch sound of pen on real paper. This small trick could make me feel more in control when drawing on glass. I was still in the stage of getting familiar with tools. Need to know which tool will produce deeper color when overlap two strokes (usually it’s maker pen).
When going down to the main street. I came across a old lady watering her garden, and a boy watching her with his mom beside. They said “Konnichiwa” to me.
