My Job Daruma

Recently Laura visited Seattle; while there she paid a visit to a store called Uwajimaya, which is an Asian supermarket specializing in a wide variety of groceries and gifts. While she was there she picked up a little Daruma for me.

For those who don't know, a Daruma is a Japanese wishing doll; when one is about to embark on a project one paints in the right eye of the Daruma doll making a wish or a vow to complete the task at hand. The person is then supposed to put their efforts and energy towards the task and the Daruma supplies the luck. When the task has been completed one paints in the other eye to signify the achievement.

This is my job Daruma, hopefully this will give me the edge in my job search.

I hope it isn't like a birthday wish and I just screwed it up by telling every one.

Dharuma Punk

This is a painting that I did based off of both the Japanese tradition of making wishes on a doll called a Daruma, who is based off of a Buddhist Monk, and on a book called Dharma Punks by Noah Levine.

I really like Darumas. I find the concept very interesting.


Via wiki : they are hollow and round Japanese wish dolls with no arms or legs, modeled after Bodidharma, the founder and first patriarch of Zen. Typical colors are red (most common), yellow, green, and white. The doll has a face with a mustache and beard, but its eyes only contain the color white. Using black ink, one fills in a single circular eye while thinking of a wish. Should the wish later come true, the second eye is filled in. It is traditional to fill in the right eye first; the left eye is left blank until the wish is fulfilled.


This is the first in a series of paintings of Darumas. I gave this painting to my friend Jason Storey who is a tattoo artist in San Francisco, he's currently working at Light House Tattoo at 3402 Geary, San Francisco, CA. He is an old school punk who specializes in Japanese style Tattoos. If you ever want a Japanese demon tattoo he is the man to see about it.






















Admittedly, I misspelled Daruma and I also painted the wrong eye, though I like to think that that adds to the rebellious spirit of this punk Daruma.

The Tattooist

I have started to learn how to tattoo. To commemorate this I decided to draw myself as a tattoo artist working in a shop.

















In progress :
















This is the final version. Most of the Flash on the walls is based off of the flash of Norman "Sailor Jerry" Collins. One of the biggest names in American tattoo, Collins was the one who is responsible for many of the designs and motifs that are associated with American traditional tattoo.

However, some of the flash is own design. In the next couple of months I plan on working on some original flash pages; stay tuned!

Monkey with Symbols

Here is something I did as part of my daily sketch series Friday Fez-tivities . I thought that it was a nice and simple drawing that I could elaborate on as an illustration in a few hours, and when I wanted to get something done that day I decided to work on this. Here is the drawing that I did back on May 1st 2009.

Here is the version I produced in Illustrator.

After I finished the drawing in Illustrator I took the illustration into Photoshop and added some texture. The texture blows out some of the details, like his little elbow hairs, but I think I like that. I'm also pleased with how the texturing softened up the primary color palette I used.