What kind of super hero are you?

I went to the American store Target today to meet Santa Claus. He was very friendly and handsome, with a large belly. I got to sit on his lap and tell him what I wanted for Christmas. He had a plastic sheet over his lap that he said was to protect him from germs. I was a little nervous. I asked for two things,
1. To find Jonathan and Linda Smith
2. That I can become a superhero.

I know that it is kind of a big wish to be a superhero, but I don't need to be an extravagant superhero. I will be happy to just be a normal, ordinary superhero, who goes about his business but in a very super way. If I can choose, I would be Waiting Man. He has the super power of great patience. He doesn't get angry, even when he is stuck in the wrong line at the supermarket. He just waits, happily, knowing that it is his duty.

If I can't become a super hero, I would like to wish for a comic artist who can draw a comic of The exciting adventures of waiting man. It will inspire the young people of the world to enjoy waiting. They are going to have to do it a lot anway

Ken Tanaka goods for X-mas

Many people have been sending messages to me asking what I have available that will make good x-mas gifts. So here are a few things. If you want something , just email me Kentanakala (att) gmail (dotttt) com

1. T-shirts.
I still have hand printed t-shirts available in most sizes from boys xl (for girls) to mens xl. You can see individual photos of the shirts by clicking here.

2. Donkey HOtey prints
These 2 color shown above hand made prints called "Donkey Hotey" are a signed and numbered series of 11.


3. Small Silk Screens
These silk screens shown above are the same designs as the t-shirts, but are printed on high quality paper. They come in a variety of paper colors.
These are $12 and the bear one can be hand colored for $25. The image area on these is about 8 x 10.






4. Big silk screens

These silk screens shown above are large, poster sized silkscreens that I made. They are $50 each plus shipping. They are signed and numbered limited editions ranging from 5-11 prints per edition.


5. Original Art
A lot of the pieces on my blog are for sale. The above is a "See and SAy" with my versions of animal friends that replace the original. If you pull the string it makes the animal noise and tells you what animal it is. It has really helped me learn my animals.

6 Jacob the Happy Rabbit Books
Sorry, these sold out this week. I will be printing more, so if you would like to be on the waiting list, let me know. They are $5.

Earthworks show with me and Remi tonight

Tonight is a "cash and carry" art show in Little Tokyo Los Angeles. Remi and I will be there with some small pieces for sale. Everything at the show is $50 , and you can go home with it tonight and use it for a holiday gift.
Remi and I also plan to shoot a little video tonight too :)

One more sad Hello Kitty

Here is the missing Hello Kitty that I couldn't find. She is mourning the loss of the handsome frog character Keroppi, who was discontinued a few years ago.
I guess it reminds Kitty-chan of her own mortality.

More HELLO KITTY

Lately I've been getting a lot of messages from people who are looking for X-mas gifts and want to see other Hello Kitty work I did for the 35th anniversary Kitty gallery show last month. So here they are. If you are interested, just email me at kentanakala (at mark) gmail dot com.

This first one is the rough proof I did for the final version that was in the show.


This one is called "Kitty rides Kitty". Meow.



This one is called. Forever Kitty.

There is one more, but I can't find it. It's a sad one of hello kitty in a graveyard. Poor Kitty.

Toilet Garden

I was walking down Venice Blvd. in Los Angeles when I came across this toilet garden. It has been raining a lot in Los Angeles lately, and so this garden of toilets popped up very suddenly.

My friend thought it was a work of installation art, but I'm pretty sure that it is just a normal toilet garden.

Scrap Art "Place Beneath Fish"

"Place beneath Fish" can be placed beneath, or beside any fish to help others identify it. The arrow pointing to the fish will help clear up any confusion about what the person is looking at. It's a perfect holiday gift for fisherman, sushi itamae, or friends who can never remember what a fish looks like.

I have lots of scraps of nice paper left over from my book illustration project, so I like to use them to make new friends. It's very fun because you don't have to worry about messing up the paper, since it is just a scrap. I like to paint without knowing what will come out. I have already put some other examples of scrap art on the blog "Elephant has time for nonsense" "Miniature soccer" and "I'm still afraid of the deep end"..."self portrait of me as someone else" and others.

Some of these will be on sale Tuesday at the Cafemode show in LIttle Tokyo Los angeles. Http://www.cafemode.com

Here are a few more scrap art pieces.

This squid and whale is made from different layers of sky and ocean. The whale, Shintaroo, is just a baby. The squid is a giant squid. He lives deep in the sea all by himself. He doesn't really have any friends because he is a solitary cephalopod. If Shintaroo dives down a little bit he might meet the squid. I think they will get a long nicely.


Here is a lion made of two scraps stuck together. His name is Lion, so it's easy to remember. I'm not sure if he's finished or not. His belly is full of zebra right now.



This one is a little different because It's the only one that I painted with a certain idea in mind. I painted it after a friend asked me to make a melancholy Beluga whale.
I think that Beluga whales are the cutest of the whales. They are small and manageable and have a funny hump above their mouth, so it looks like a giant lip. I have met humpback whales, right whales, grey whales and killer whales, but I have not met a beluga. I am hoping to make friends with one soon.
I would also like to meet a MInke whale. I have never seen a minke whale in the wild, but I have seen one on my cafeteria tray in elementary school. He tasted strong and musty.

Ken Tanaka surfs Waimea?

Ho, bra. On my trip to Hawaii last weekend, I filmed this video of the day before the Eddie Aikau big wave surf contest at Waimea bay. Here is my new video me and my new friend Jacob the banana.

Jacob the Unhappy Rabbit

I met my friend Jacob the Happy Rabbit about 18 months ago. He appeared in some comics that I made and He and I became good friends.
I like Jacob because he is always happy, and can cheer me up when I am down.

I had never met any of Jacob's relatives until I met his cousin Jacob the unhappy rabbit earlier this morning. They are cousins, but they are very different. Jacob the unhappy rabbit lives in a small patch of grass in a parking lot in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Jacob the unhappy rabbit is a realist. His thoughts have even influenced the way he looks and given his fur and features a more realistic look than his cousin's. Jacob the unhappy rabbit feels lonesome all the time, even when he is surrounded by other rabbits. I like Jacob the unhappy rabbit, but I feel bad for him. He says he has an empty feeling inside his rabbit belly. I tried to pet him, but he moved out of the way.

Jacob the Happy Rabbit lives all over the world. He hops from place to place and meets different people and objects and animals and they almost always make him happy. Sometimes he makes them happy too. He has only met his cousin twice. I'm not sure what would happen if they spent more time together. Maybe I can lock them in a rabbit hole together for a few days and see what happens. Somebody could make a reality show about it.




If you haven't met Jacob the happy rabbit before (pictured above), you can see him in these videos. "Kabuki" Comic book artist David Mack, encouraged me to make my own comic, so I went home and drew Jacob. Later, many nice artists helped me draw Jacob comics, like James Jean and Paul Pope. I haven't made a Jacob comic lately, but maybe I will do one soon.

Interview

Here is a new interview I did for the Seba-World Blog.

The 37th view of Mount Fuji

I went to Hawaii this past weekend for the Eddie Aikau Big Wave Contest. I didn't win.
I also stopped by the Honolulu Academy of the Arts. They were having a special display of Ukiyoe woodblock prints from Hokusai and HIroshige, including all 36 prints in the 36 views of Mt. Fuji series. You might not know the series by name but you have probably seen the images.





When I got back to Los Angeles, I was inspired to draw my own view of Mr. Fuji. So here is the 37th view of Mt. Fuji. It's not a wood block print. It was done with gouache and scrap paper. I'm the person in the back of the airplane, in row 37 seat E. If you look closely, you can see that I am playing sudoku. You have to look really, really closely.




Also, here is a video of the raw footage of the giant waves at Waimea bay on December 7th 2009.

Fantasy Football

Miniature golf is very popular In America. It's a golf course, but the holes are hidden behind funny castles and moving obstacles. I sometimes see their giant windmills on the side of the freeways.


I have been wondering why there is no miniature soccer. I would like to play miniature soccer, and I think it should be an olympic sport.

If I am ever made into King of a small island I will make miniature soccer my national sport. There will be teams, with colorful uniforms and trophies and fight songs. My team's symbol will be the Sea Otter or maybe pudding.

Unsure animal has a problem.

What if you were a nice animal, but you woke up one day and had animal amnesia?

You might have hit your head hard on a tree the day before, or been partially eaten by some kind of bear or mountain cat. What if all of your animal instincts went away, and you forgot all about what kind of animal you were and how you were supposed to live?

This happened to my friend Jacob Tortoise. I saw him walking by, very slowly, and called his name but he didn't even look. I kept calling to him, but he just ignored me and went on walking, pretty slowly.

It must have been animal amnesia.

I'd dreamed about Jacob so many times before, I'm sure he would have recognized me.

Green Cat is listening closely

This is the second animal I did for the art book. I guess the editor will choose between Jacob the Polar Bear and Jacob the green cat.

Jacob the green cat has excellent listening skills. He can hear things that you and I can't. One day he heard me wondering. Another day, he heard me being indecisive. And he even heard me when I was drawing the shadow under his tail. I wonder if hearing all those things makes it hard for him to sleep.

Jacob the Polar Bear

On Monday, I got a message from a person editing an art book who asked me to contribute a painting. The deadline was the next day, so I only had one day to do it. I did two different paintings.

This is Jacob (Lighting) Hal the Polar Bear. Lighting isn't his middle name, it's just a nickname. His friend Trudy (Fresh Produce) Whistlecap gave him the nickname when she saw him chasing a murre. He is very fast.

I'm not sure what is happening in this painting. I thought maybe Jacob is trying to become an explorer. He is sailing west on his chunk of ice, and is looking for the Northwest passage. He has a long voyage ahead of him. Maybe he is thinking about Trudy, and wondering if he will be forgotten.

I made Oden. おでんを作った。

Oden is a sort of Japanese stew. You put dashi (broth) in a pot and add lots of fish cakes, tofu, hard boiled eggs and daikon and you simmer it for a long time. I also add Konyaku and Udon noodles and carrots too.

I am making it right now, and my apartment smells like a Japanese city street in the fall. During FAll and Winter, in big cities, you can find Oden food stalls (yatai) set up at night by train stations. You can sit on a stool and eat yummy odens and drink sake or beer and talk to old drunk men.

It's very tasty, but it gives me a lonesome feeling to smell it cooking in my apartment, so far away from home.

Garage sale Babar makes Sunday happy

I went to one garage sale today and found this Babar linen tapestry. The tag on the back says it is from 1961. Babar is a pretty old elephant, but he's still very fit and healthy.
I didn't go to garage sales yesterday (Saturday) because the waves were 3-5 ft in Los Angeles and they wanted me to surf them. Today I stopped at one sale and found Babar waiting for me. He was three dollars.

I guess one of my main art influences is this kind of soft and happy animal art from the 60's and 70's. I like Babar's family very much. When I see soft elephants I feel very pleasant and happy with the world.



This is a soft animal print by an artist named Robert Van Allen, that I got at a garage sale a while ago. I looked up his name, but there is no other information on the internet. I could only find 2 other prints by him. People call them "Stretched canvas" prints. I would like to get more soft animal prints like this from the sixties and seventies. This Kangaroo hangs at the foot of my bed,so that I can go to bed at night, and wake up in the morning, in a soft animal wonderland.

Self Portrait of Ken Tanaka

Yesterday, I drew this self portrait of me as someone else. You are probably thinking that it looks just like me, if I were somebody else. Thank you, that's nice of you to say. I think next I'll draw a self portrait of me when I was a whale, or maybe a throat lozenge. Is there a self portrait you'd like to see?

You can't tell in the scan so well, but this one is made on two pieces of scraps that are glued together. I drew the bottom half of my face first and then decided I should draw a top half too, so I had to get another piece of paper. If you look, you can see a line through my eyes, that's the second paper.

I've been painting my book project on big pieces of paper. I cut the pages down a little and I end up with lots of scraps of fancy rag paper. I like to take the left over scraps and paint on them. My elephant friend in the last post also lives on a scrap. There is no pressure to make something special when you are using a scrap. I like to paint big and stupid on them sometimes.

I painted a green kitty on another scrap too, but she's not done. I can't figure out what she is saying. She is hanging above my bed, so that I can listen to her each morning when I wake up and at night when I go to sleep. She is such a quiet kitty though. I'm going to have to listen harder.

Make Time for Nonsense

I went to the Los Angeles zoo. A small boy was playing by the elephants. Her mother was tugging his hand "Let's Go". It was time to leave, but the boy did not want to go. He stayed with his hand on the fence. His mother yelled "I don't have time for your nonsense." After she said this, an elephant walked to where the boy was standing and waved his trunk up. He made his elephant noise and looked at the boy. I understood what the elephant was saying. He was letting the boy know that he had plenty of time for nonsense. I like that elephant.
After the boy and his mom went away I stayed and played a game of elephant charades. I didn't leave until the final closing announcement.
It's important to make time for nonsense. If I ever forget about that, I will go back and visit that elephant.

Acrylic ink and watercolor on rag paper (Elephant is actually longer but he would not fit in the scanner.

Hello Kitty Cosplay Masquerade ball

Last night I stopped by the Hello Kitty masquerade ball at the Royal-T in Los Angeles. I was very surprised to see a line of 3-400 people waiting to get in. I was very lucky because they were letting the artists in without having to wait:) Some people waited 3 hours to go in. There were many handsome cosplayers. I dressed as Dokin-chan from Anpanman.

I made a video for my Japanese channel that shows a small part of the long line and some of the costumes.



The three week Hello Kitty anniversary celebration ends Sunday. Goodbye, Kitty.