Job Daruma Finished!

Way back in September of 2009 I received a Daruma from Laura. Today I can no color in his other eye because my prayer has been answered, I now have a full time job.
As a friendly reminder 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.

Christmas Gifts

This Christmas I did several acrylic paintings as Christmas gifts, half of which I forgot to take pictures of, though some were small enough and flat enough that I could run them through my scanner. These are just a few I will post more when I am able to get pictures of them.
A while back laura showed me this artist who uses oil on wood and I really liked how that looked and the texture that wood gave to the paintings, not to mention how easy and cheap it is to find pieces of wood to paint on. Though I don't have any oil paintings, I don't have a work space with the ventilation to work with them, so I decided to use acrylics instead.






















I did this one for Laura.
I started this painting like 6 months ago for the longest time it was just a daruma on a piece of wood for Christmas I decided to finish the painting by adding Hungarian (since Laura's family is Hungarian) flower designs inspired by their traditional style of embroidery, Kalocsa. This seems to be something I have been doing combining Daruma's and western European culture, I hope it isn't too culturally insensitive of me, I just love the design of the Daruma as well as the cultural meaning. Surprisingly I think that the flowers and the daruma work well together and the Kalocsa was a fun style to work in.



















I did this one for Laura's mom
She is a former nurse and now a nutritional instructor at John F Kenedy University and when ever Laura and I come to her with a question about an ailment or a food question the answer is usually "try putting some coconut oil on it." She even fixed a a stuck lock by sticking coconut oil in the lock. So I wanted to make her a plaque that said just that. I looked at a lot of vintage signs as reference and came up with this design. On Laura's painting I would draw on the wood with a pencil which would dent the wood and aake it more difficult to put a smooth painting on it. I went to an art show last year and saw a show of Todd Schorr's work and they had a DVD on how he worked. One of the things that he did on his paintings was to take a drawing and cover the back with charcoal and then trace the drawing on to the canvas. I did the same thing here and it worked really well. Though I think in retrospect I would have painted the white on the board first. I really liked how the text came out. I showed this to Laura and she felt that the composition felt unbalanced and that I should add another coconut. I had wanted to avoid having two coconuts because I thought it would end up looking like balls (just sayin').
















Here is the final version with the extra coconut and the added palm frond. It was kind of rough around the edges but I really liked how this turned out, and so did Laura's mom.

Christmas Ornaments

This week I painted two Christmas Ornaments for Arts Benicia. This was designed as a fund raiser for Arts Benicia, where the artist members were invited to come and get a blank ornament and decorate it to be sold for their gallery and education programs.





















Here is the first one, a Daruma Santa, or more a blue eyed whited haired Daruma. I figured with this one I would try and be more commercial with a Santa-esque figure. Though I don't know if appropriating a Daruma for Christmas was the most socially sensitive thing to do, I liked the idea and the colors are similar to Santa.
My second idea was going to be for me and for fun. For my second ornament I decided to do a skull and tentacles. After I told Laura what it was she told me she hoped it didn't sell so that she could have it for herself, no such luck.





















Here it is half way through painting it.





















Here I am painting the tentacles on the skull in the Arts Benicia gallery.





















A close up of me painting a tentacle.





















Here are my ornaments on the tree during the Holiday Parlor Tour. I volunteered to help out Arts Benicia and their very talented program coordinator to set up the room, which involved me helping to carry lots of heavy things up a flight of stairs. The event wasn't much of a sucess, where as we didn't sell too many ornaments, just three. One was mine! I sold the skull one the day before the event to one of the Arts Benicia board member who loved it.

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.