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.

James and Catey's Wedding Invite

Last week my friends Catey and James asked if I would create a wedding invitation for them with them fighting zombies. This meant an opportunity two work with two of my favourite subjects ; my friends, and zombies.


First I did a series of sketches for them. The only instructions Catey gave me was to have them in Las Vegas, where their wedding is being held, and to have them fighting zombies. James said to do something along the lines of Conan the Barbarian standing on top of his fallen enemies; Catey didn't know what he was talking about so she said to ignore him. I did the sketches that were based off of Conan and they felt rather sexist, so I did several other sketches where the couple was fighting zombies and they preferred them to the more Conan-esque designs.


















Here is the sketch that they liked best. The only thing that they wanted different was to have their positions changed where james was in the back holding a shot gun and a machette and that Catey would have the chainsaw.


















Here is the pencilled version that I drew on some bristol paper I cut down to fit in my scanner. I made sure to position them so that I had plenty of room for the all of the text elements.




















Here is the inked version with blood spray.























This is the final version (I removed all the info on when and where and all that jazz). They are printing their wedding invites like flyers and they found out that it is the same price to have them either black and white or color, but they left it up to me if it was going to be colored. I decided to color it with mute tones and texture it digitally to make it look gritty and pleasantly post-apocalyptic.

Aside from the chain saw blade getting lost in the blood spatter, I'm really happy with how it turned out and most importantly, so were Catey and James. Congratulations you two – see you in Vegas!

Why Be Blue?

Here is a painting I did for a friend of mine, Ricky Burger, who is a Sacramento based musician who I happen to think is going places. She has asked me to do animation for one of her upcoming music videos

video so I have started to do character design for her, beginning with the main character, the sad accordion. I thought he would make an interesting painting and allow me to explore him more as a character so I painted him as an abandoned instrument in an attic. There will be more about this project in the future.





















The musical note he is saying is a B flat, a dumb joke I know, but I love it so.

A Few of My Favorite Things

If you know me it is no big secret that I have an odd obsession with fezes. I also happen to love skulls, so I decided to do a painting of a few of my favourite things.





















One of my skull models wears one of my fezes, as well as any eyepatch. He makes for good company.

Lady Skull Face in the Big City

I revisited Lady Skull Face in this painting of her in a desolate city scape.





















I think I will be doing more works featuring her in the future.

Paper Bag Kappa

Here is a paper bag drawing of a Kappa, a Japanese water imp, who is a Yokai, which are monsters and demons of local Japanese legend. I have recently started studying about Yokai and find them fascinating; I plan to do more illustrations of them. I was turned onto the Yokai by my friend Jason who recommended that Laura and I should see "The Great Yokai War" and "Gegege No Kitaro" both live action movies filled with Yokai both as CGI and as dudes in glorious rubber suits. They are awesome movies and would recommend them to every one. Kappa are one of my favourite yokai in particular, I even have one tattooed on my left leg, so you can be expecting to see more of these in the future.

The Crusher of Hearts

Earlier this year I did a sketch for my daily sketch blog of a female Luchador crushing a heart and named it "Yo Soy La Reina De La Trituradora Del Anillo" which in Spanish means (or at least what meant I meant it to mean) "I'm the Crusher, Queen of the Ring." Named after the Ramones song "The Crusher".

I really liked the sketch but i wanted to do more with it and so i decided to redraw it here are a
few sketches.

I wanted to capture more of the whole scene in the painting i want to do. So I wanted to make sure to draw her as full figure in the ring. For some reason I have a habit of drawing characters too big so that they don't fit on the page, so I wanted to make sure I had the whole figure. The Idea was to make it maybe like the end of the fight and she has ripped out her opponent's heart and she is surrounded by the dead. I love little Dia De Los Muertos statues and they were my inspiration for the audence members.





















I felt that the most important part of the painting is her squeezing the heart. I didn't feel like i had a good position for her to stand in so I worked on the on some detail sketches of her of her standing in a different position planing to go back and drawing the whole scene around her when i found something I was happy with.



















In this sketch trying to iron out position and posing so she looks like she is crushing it. I was also trying to get back to the original sketch design and try and recapture some of what i loved in that drawing.





















I decided to move from here to a test painting, i wanted to make sure that I had the hand gesture correct and I wanted to make sure that I could paint her well, it has been a long time since I painted with water color so I was a little uneasy about starting it.

Here is the first in a series of paintings that I plan to do with Luchadors and in particular La Trituradora de Corazóns.

I tried a new technique where I painted over the sketch and then inked the painting, it works, but the only benefit is my black outlines are darker, so I don't know if I will do it again.