Small Brown Dog is not a bad dog. But, like any dog,
Sometimes small brown dog barks things he doesn't mean.
Small Brown Dog is sorry.
Will you forgive Small Brown Dog
for barking all those things
he
barked
at
you?
Small brown dog is also very sorry when in the grass with orange background.
Lately I have been making most of my people and animals with an orange wash and background. When I started making animals and people, they used to all have white backgrounds like this one called Housecat.
Small, apologetic dog is the first animal I have put in a white background in over a year. Which sorry dog do you like better?
This is a new HD quality edit of a video from November 2008. In this video I visit the Smithsonian Institute Museum of American Art in Washington DC, where I am taught what art is. This is one of my favorite videos that I have made. The woman in it is handsomely kind and friendly.
I visited this museum while preparing for my show at Billy Shire Fine Arts in April of 2009. Here is another video of my trip to DC.
In the city of Nagoya, I recently visited my old friend, artist, musician, and ramen man Pay Katsuyuki. I have known Pay for many years, and he was kind enough to contribute some work to the garage sale part of my show at Billy Shire Fine Arts Last Year.
In Nagoya, we watch our friend play in his band "Ogre you Asshole" and then we painted in the park. Pay paints with oils on paper. I had never used oil paints before, but Pay let me borrow his and showed me some techniques. I painted a dog mouse.
While we were painting in the park, a funny girl came riding up to us on her bike. She was about 14 years old. This was our conversation.
Girl: What are you doing? Me: We're painting? Girl: Why are you painting? Me: Because it's fun. Girl: What are you painting? Me; A Dog. Girl: Does that mouse have a name? Me; It's a dog. What do you think its name is? Girl: Isn't it Miki? Me: Do you want to write it on there? (She writes it on there....you can see it in the red area). Me; What's your name? Girl: Miki. Me; Oh, the same as the dog? Girl: Yeah...How long are you gonna be here? Why don't you go home? Me; Because we're painting? Girl: The mosquitos will get you. Me: Yes. Girl: What are you doing later? Me; Having Dinner. Girl: You should buy me dinner.
Miki stayed with us for 2o minutes. She never stopped asking questions, and then suddenly she rode away on her bike. Now all I have to remember her by is her name written below my Dog Mouse.
This was my frist oil painting. I like the way oil melts into paper...and I like the smell of the Linseed oil that you use to thin the paint. That is probably the best thing about oil painting. I carried this dog mouse around with me for a few weeks, and every time I opened my sketch book I could smell the linseed oil and remember this day painting in the park.
Below is one of Pay's oils. You can see more of his work at his web site. http://web.mac.com/payroyal/iWeb/Site/present.html
You can meet Pay and hear his beautiful music here. This is one of my first videos.
Most people imagine that the life of a super hero is action packed, full of battles with super villians, space creatures, and monsters. For my recent project "Daily Life of Super Hero", I have been interviewing super heroes and drawing scenes from their everyday lives.
This is Benevolent Man. His super power is a form of extreme benevolence. When in battle, he has the ability to use his benevolent nature to induce feelings of empathy in his foes. I spoke to B.M. about some of his most recent work.
Ken Tanaka- What kind of battles have you been fighting recently?
Benevolent Man: "It had been a very slow year, up until this week. I think I had, maybe two or three major jobs...and then a couple of little side gigs, like getting frisbees off of a roof, or finding an elderly man who had wondered away from home.
Every time I go to the unemployment line, it seems like I see another hero that I know. Usually recessions are a boom time for us, crime goes up and our phones start to ring. But it's different this time.
The police and civilian crime fighting groups have increased their productivity with new technology like tasers, and such, and they only call us as a last resort. There's just a lot of down time now, and that's been hard. "
K.T.- You said it had been slow up until this week? What happened this week?
B.M.- On Wednesday I got a call from President Obama. It's the first time I got a call from a US president since Reagan asked me to go to San Salvador in '86.
K.T.- What did the president ask you to do?
B.M.- I can't really talk details, but Mr. Obama asked me to fly to Florida to meet with a man who had been making some threats that the President feared could lead to violence or even war.
K.T.- Was the job a success?
B.M.- It looks like everything is fine now, but I may have to go back. It will take a lot of benevolence to keep this man on the right path.
Illustration: Benevolent Man and his dog Timber enjoy a morning walk at Patterson Park.
Collage with Gouache, Oil paint, Acrylic Ink, and dog.
This is another piece of Scrap Art that I made yesterday. It's made from the paper that is left over after I trim the large sheets that I did my book illustration on. You can see more scrap art here
This rotund piglet, (Full Name: Jacob Aaron Eric Piglet ) has a question for you. He has questions for everybody. A friend of mine who is a pot bellied pig told me that there is always a piglet like Jacob in every litter. A piglet who won't stop asking questions. I'm not sure what question Jacob Aaron Eric Piglet is about to ask in this drawing, But you can see he hope that you know the answer.
This is another test drawing I did for a page in my book. I ended up not using Jacob, instead I used his cousin Ruthica Jessie Tabitha Piglet. I only used her little piglet face.
I just got back from my friend James' house where Gary "The Gooch" Musgrave helped me to scan my images. I'm drawing them on giant 22x30 inch pieces of paper, so scanning them takes a long time.
I'm very happy to have the scans done, because now I am not so worried that all my paintings will burn up in a fire, or get washed away in a flood, or be eaten by primates. I spent a long time drawing all those pages, and I had a lot of anxiety that something would happen to them before I got them scanned.
Now that I have the scans in a folder, I'm going to copy the folder and put it on thumbdrives and disks, I'm going to put the discs all over so I will always have one even if the hungry primates attack.
I will bury one outside in the garden, where I bury all my kimchi.
Thanks, Gary Musgrave, for your help. Check out his website to see his beautiful silk screens. He learned to silk screen from the famous artist Jordan Crane (he is a very nice man). They recently sold their work together at Comic Con. I bought Gary's piece of paper silkscreen that you can see on the website.
This is Paulito the baby raccoon. He is a test drawing that I made while illustrating my new book. Paulito is cute, but he is also rabid, so if you want to pet him, make sure to wear very thick gloves.
In the final version, he looks the same, only he has some foamy saliva around his mouth. If my book gets popular, maybe lots of kids will want a rabid baby raccoon for a pet and it will start a big trend. If you are an entrepreneur, you should start collecting rabid coons now.
Actually, Paulito only has a very small cameo appearance in this book.
For the past year, I have been working on writing and illustrating a Children's Book for Grown Ups. It's a kind of parody of a regular children's book.....
This Tuesday I completed my last drawing. I think there are about 22 pages total. Some paintings took only one day, but some of them took a few weeks or even a month. Tomorrow, I will go to my friend James' house. He is going to let me use his big scanner to scan in all the pages. Then I'll have to find a photoshop expert to help me get the images ready for printing and correct some of the colors and stuff.
Then I guess it's time to start trying to find a way to publish the book.
Once I have it figured out, I will give out more details about the book, and probably make some videos about it too.
I'm hoping that you all enjoy it, and then I can make more and more.
I have spent most of my art time making drawings for this book, so I haven't been able to do many non-book paintings lately. Now that it's done, I hope to start painting again, and I will probably try to have another gallery show.
This video is part 4 for of my Japanese learning videos with the very handsome Remi February. Takeo also joins us in this video and we teach some common Japanese vocabulary words.
Here are some of the other how to speak Japanese lessons with me and Remi.
Lesson 1
Lesson 2
Lesson 3
Bonus Lesson How to Speak Japanese by speaking English
Rebo the dog moved on to the Pupland earlier this week. He was the dog friend of one of my own very good friend's Mr. GB. Rebo was totally blind, so GB had to be his seeing eye human.
I can't remember how Rebo lost his eye, I think maybe he had a fight with a possum.
He was a very kind and funny dog, and I'm glad I got to meet and play with him a lot before he went away.
GB is an artist, and he asked his artist friends to do a sketch of Rebo for a Rebo memorial, so this is mine.
On Saturday July 24th, Remi-chan and I wandered around Comic-con looking for beautiful costumed cosplayers. I have never worn a costume at a comic convention, but seeing all these cosplayers having fun made me want to try it. I will go as a plate of tarako spaghetti next year, or maybe a piece of stinky tofu.
I was at Comic Con from Friday to Sunday and I met many nice people. In this video I meet some voice over actors who work in games and anime (Naruto, Bleach, Yu-Gi-Oh! ) as well as the director and producer of the Cartoon Network's Metalocalypse.
I'll have a few more Comic Con videos coming soon with artists and cosplayers and the very handsome Remi February.
Here is my most popular Comic Con video from an earlier convention.
A big south swell is hitting the beaches of Los Angeles so Takeo, and I went to surf Malibu, along with Papa Takeo who is visiting from Japan.
I've been surfing for a year now, and I'm just at the point where I can get up easily and ride most waves and I'm learning to make turns and carve the wave. Takeo has been surfing since he was 14 so he's very good, and Papa Takeo has been surfing since 1970. We had a nice session at Malibu, and I got 12 or 15 waves, but none were very long rides, as you can see in this video.
Before I started surfing I was a boogie boarder. I used to go out as a kid in Shimane, and then boogie boarded in Los Angeles when I came here. In the video below you can see some footage of me boogie boarding with youtubers ericsurf6 and hikosaemon in Shonan, Japan.
The music is by a band called "Hachiman" that just released their first album in the US. They have another great song called "Flavor of the Month" that Hikosaemon had on a video, but they had to take it off of Youtube when the album was released. Check it out on Itunes.
You probably know Takeo from my videos. He is a white man who was born and raised in Japan (chiba) and came to America to go to film school. Now Takeo has graduated and he just made his first film.
Takeo was able to get some real Hollywood actors to star in his short. Reid Ewing is the character "Dylan" on the popular US ABC TV series Modern Family. Shelby Young is on a soap opera called DAys of Our lives. Tara Sands is a well known voiceover artist.
I guess Takeo must be pretty good to attract all these famous and talented people.
Takeo's video is a little too....adult....for my youtube channel, so we made this video to put up on my channel instead.
I was looking through my sketch book and I found this man, looking down at his feet. I don't remember when I drew him...maybe sometime earlier this year.
I'd forgotten him, but when I saw him again I suddenly wanted to be his friend.
He looked sad.
I asked him what was wrong, and he said in an invisible voice "I'm ashamed of all the things I can't remember." I wrote those words down next to him, so that other people would understand without having to ask him what was on his mind.
His name is Edward Tolby. Edward Tolby is ashamed of all the things he is ashamed of. H e is also ashamed of all the shameful things he has done in the past, but forgotten. In fact, he is more ashamed of the forgotten shame. I tried to cheer Edward up by telling him that there was no shame in forgetting. I hope the next time I draw Edward Tolby he is smiling.
AFter the sketch, I copied Edward onto some fancier paper using a light box (putting the original drawing under the new paper and placing them both over a clear lighted area).
I then painted a few different versions using different colors and mediums (some with water color and some with acrylic ink). I don't do this with every drawing. Sometimes I paint the first one and I am satisfied. At least half of my drawing don't involve a sketch, but just go straight to painting...in those cases I only do one draft.
In this case, I wanted to see how other colors would change Edward so I did three different versions.
Which one do you like? Do you think Edward feels differently in each one? What is he feeling?
The last step in the process...I choose the Edward I like and put him behind glass. He will live there until someone or something frees him.
This weekend is the Vidcon in Century City, Los Angeles. It's a Youtube and Vlogger convention put on by the Vlog Brothers. It goes from today, Friday, till Sunday the 11th and if you are a youtube fan you can watch footage live at this link.
There are panels about youtube, new media and how to use new technology for videos and vlogging. There are also many performances and talks with famous youtube celbrities like Shane Dawson, Phillip Defranco and Michael Buckley. If you are not a youtuber, you've probablyy never heard of these folks, but they are very famous in the youtube world.
If you live in LA and are a youtuber, you should stop by. Even if you don't attend the actual talks, you can have fun just meeting people in the lobby.
Takeo-Kun and I celebrated the 4th of July, America's Independence Holiday, in Venice Beach, CA. It was a Japanese party, so we celebrated with a traditional Japanese game called Suika Wari (Watermelon Splitting). It is similar to a pinata party, but instead of candy hidden inside of a donkey or Pikachuu, you get to eat the sweet, juicy flesh that is hidden inside of a watermelon.
If you are a fan of Japanese manga or anime, you probably know Suika Wari. It's in almost every summertime story that takes place on a beach, especially in a romance comic. The player is blindfolded, and spins around until they don't know which way the watermelon is. The spectators guide the player to help him get closer to the melon. Once the player thinks she has found the watermelon, she gets one whack. If she misses, another person gets to play.
I hope you will get a chance to split a watermelon this summer, or at least eat one.
