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.