Daily Life of a Superhero: Sunday morning dog walk




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.

ACCEPTANCE




Acceptance.
Acrylic Ink on Rives BFK paper.

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


and here.

Or visit my website to see lots more. Http://www.kentanakalovesyou.com

Rotund Piglet has a Question (another test sketch from my book)



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.

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