The Girl Writing a Letter by the Sea at Sunset

This illustration is from The Day Pochi Came to the Sea, a picture book about the friendship between a young girl named Chii-chan and her dog Pochi. Chii-chan, who is visiting her grandmother at the sea, misses her dog Pochi, and is seen here writing a letter to him. In this illustration of the sea at sunset, the big horizontal brush strokes show the shimmering waves at the bottom of the frame, the sun setting in the ocean across the middle, and the clouds, reflecting the color of the setting sun, along the top. Employing rapid brush strokes required that Chihiro have a firmly established image of the scene beforehand, enabling her to work rapidly without pause. The girl’s profile and the yacht floating on the waves were made by using water to dilute the watercolors that had previously been applied.