Ozoni Boy

This is a portrait illustration from the 2011 Calendar Project that myself and 3 other illustrators put together. Each of us contributed 3 illustrations for various months. For January, I was inspired by the Japanese New Year, Oshougatsu when many celebrate by enjoying a bowl of ozoni which basically consists of dashi soup broth and  mochi rice cakes. Ozoni Boy wears an over-sized ochawan soup bowl as a hat and has a mitsuba fragrant herb, commonly used as a garnish, in his mouth. As in Kashiwa Girl I’m playing with scale and was excited to find a way to combine both child portraits and food, two of my favorite subjects!