Baby Racoon Friend and my new book

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.

You can see some of my newer paintings at http://www.kentanakalovesyou.com

Always Thinking About Flowers

He goes by Judge, and people are never sure if it is his real name or a nickname. He might not remember either. He has a difficult job and he doesn't like to talk about it.


A lot of people think about a lot of things, but he is always thinking of flowers. If this ever changes, the always can easily be removed.



He is made of...
Water color and acrylic ink on print making paper scraps.

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.

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.

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.