I am currently on a business trip in India for two months. You may not see many updates during this time but rest assured that this temporary silence will only bear good fruits. 

Intermission!

A short primer on how to eat food in India. 

1. Clean
Clean the plate by rubbing paper tissue over the surface to make sure it is actually clean.

2. Order
You ordered food and here it is. Dig in. Here: 1 roti (flat bread), 1 aloo palak (spinach curry with potatoes) and a lime juice.

3. Eat
Eat using your right hand. No extra tools necessary. Don’t use your left. Why? It is reserved for wiping your butthole. Exception, it seems it is ok to use the left for drinking or using the spoon to put more gravy on your plate. You wash your hands afterall, right?

4. Clean, again
When you’re done the waiter will bring a bowl of warm water with a piece of lime. No, this is not a drink. You squish the lime and the acid in the juice and the warm water will help to remove all the oily stuff from your hand. Afterwards you can use a paper tissue to dry your hand.

5. Pay
Pay your bills and add a tip for the service and good food.

6. Nibble
And, something little and sweet to nibble on. Here it is all aniseed but there may also be some salty seeds sometimes.

The prints of my Eyezon paintings are ready and in the store. Now, since this has been revealed and even printed I thought it might be nice to show off how the whole painting was made. I hope you enjoy it.

1. After working out the composition thumbnails I start with a 1/1 sketch of the painting. This one is actually drawn on very thin paper because I transferred it from previous sketches.

2. Next, I take a charcoal or similar piece of drawing tool and rub the backside of the paper. Then place the paper over the desired surface and basically use this as a cheap method to transfer the sketch/drawing onto the canvas.

3. After I transferred the basic line work I take a pencil of a similar color. In this case brown and tidy everything.

4. I forgot to buy some masking film and so I have to use my regular painting tape. It’s a bit more work but works just as well.

5. My aim was to recreate the gradients that can be found in quite a few ukiyo-e prints and in this case the airbrush was a very helpful tool. The spray even added some wonderful texture making the gradient more lively.

6. The last final step in this case was the inking and painting the details with a brush.

Scanned painting

Prints are available here

lanena, Fig-lab and the talented group of international artists who participated in the Dai Kaiju Card Monster Custom Toy Show last month have all agreed to donate 100% of the proceeds from the Show sales to relief for the victims of the disaster in the Tohoku region of Japan.

Website is here: fig-lab.com/daikaiju
Japanese page is here: fig-x.jp/daikaiju

Here is my contribution to the Lunartik Mini Tea Custom Show. The custom was made from the provided mini tea toy by Matt Jones, Glyos pieces by Onell Design and pieces of my Charlize Harlow toy. Painted with acrylics. Measures about 13cm in height.

Lunartik’s Mini Tea Tour featuring 70+ custom works of art, created from Matt Jones’ platform toy, Lunartik in a Cup of Tea.

The Mini Tea Tour debuts at the 43° Gallery in Berlin, then moves on to Vienna to the Sixxa store for spring, then off to the USA and to Dragatomi for summer, and lastly we see this year’s tour come to rest in Forbidden Planet’s Mega Store in London for the Christmas season.

I feel very honored and fortunate to have been invited to the 5th Anniversary Celebration of Mark Nagata’s Max Toy Company.

We (the participants) were asked not send in customized toys but instead come up with our own interpretations of the protagonists and antagonists of Mark’s fictional universe. It was not long ago that I came across the website captainmaxx.com which shows various (fake) vintage cases of packing design, tin toys and photos about Captain Maxx – Mark’s own version of Japan’s most well known superhero: Ultraman. I liked the approach so much that I felt inspired to create my own attempt at turning Captain Maxx and his enemy Eyezon into a fake ukiyo-e print suggesting that the hero and his adversaries might actually be rooted in Japanese folklore, albeit relatively unknown.

The diptych is painted on two panels of grey cardboard using ink, acrylics, brushes and airbrush. Each panel is slightly larger than A4 (ca 8×12 inch). The painting will be shown in Tokyo April 2nd and 3rd and later at San Francisco’s Double Punch Gallery. Prints of the painting will be available later.

Below are some images advertising the show.