Giant Robot Neko Show

 Here's a peek at my new piece "Love Cat" for the 5th Annual Neko Show at Giant Robot.

Neko Show 2023: Our 5th Annual, Cat Themed Art Exhibition

Feb 11th - 26th, 2023

Live Opening Tour and Artwork Available Online: 

Saturday February 11th, 11:00 am PST

Artist Reception: 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm

Regular visiting hours: Wed - Sun, 12:00 pm - 6:00 pm

Closed Mondays & Tuesdays

Check out #GRNekoShow on Instagram for sneak peeks

Flyer Image by Calamity Cole

Allison Bamcat, Amy Matsushita-Beal, Angela Song, Angela Ramones, Calamity Cole, Cassia Lupo, Christian Leon Guerrero, Deborah Kraft, Defective Pudding, Erick Martinez, Eunice San Miguel, Flat Bonnie, Heartslob, Hooked Hands, Jaime Soto, Jenn Lima, Jen Tong, Juliet Schreckinger, Justine Lin, Kaylynn Kim, Kelly Yamagishi, Kevin Chan, Lap Ngo, Lisa Kogawa, Lucas Pincer-Flynn, Mariangela Le Thanh, Mari Inukai, Mary Delioussina, Michelle Ku, Natalie Andrewson, Natalie Center, Nellie Le, Nikki Longfish, Olivia Pecini, Po Yan Leung, Sam Grinberg, Sanaa Khan, Sarah Pinner, Shiho Pate, Stacy Javier, Stevie Shao, Susie Ghahremani, Thinh Nguyen and more!

Giant Robot Fruits & Veggies Show

Fruits and Veggies Show: Art You Should Almost Eat

May 28th - June19th, 2022

Live Opening Tour and Artwork Available Online: May 28th, 11:00 am

Artist Reception: May 28th, 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm

Regular visiting hours: Wednesday - Sunday 12:00 pm - 6:00 pm

Check out #GRFruitsandVeggiesShow on Instagram for sneak peeks

Flyer Image by Sanaa Khan

Participating Artists:

Allison Bamcat, Alycea Tinoyan, Amy Matsushita-Beal, Angela Song, Ben Chu, Blake Jones, Brenda Chi, Brian Luong, Cassia Lupo, Cate McCleery, Cleonique Hilsaca, Danni Fisher-Shin, Deth P Sun, Erick Martinez, Eunice San Miguel, Fin Rogers, Flat Bonnie, Hooked Hands, Jaime Soto, Jen Tong, Juliet Schreckinger, Junko Ogawa, Justine Lin, Kanako Abe, Kelly Yamagishi, Kevin Chan, Lisa Kogawa, Made in Chynna, Maggie Chiang, Mari Inukai, Mariangela Le Thahn, Natalie Andrewson, Nellie Le, Nikki Longfish, Olivia Pecini, Priscilla Moreno, Rain Szeto, Sanaa Khan, Sarah Pinner, Sun-Mo Koo, Theo Ellsworth, Thinh Nguyen, Tiffany Liu, and more!

Since May is AAPI Heritage Month, I decided to paint one of my favorite Southeast Asian fruits for the show: Mangosteen. 

New Washi Tape

One of the products that was I was working on in developing late 2019/early 2020 was washi tape. I, myself, use washi tape on a daily basis…whether it be for packaging shop orders or just to tape off the border of my paper when painting. But then the pandemic hit. It put a bit of a halt on global manufacturing/trade/production, and I honestly didn’t know when I would be doing any overseas manufacturing ever again.

Now that the world is starting to open back up again, I decided to baby step my way into getting stuff made again. I have asked around to friends who have still been getting stuff made throughout the pandemic how the transit time has been like. One of my big fears was that product would be stuck in customs for a while. But it turned out to not be a big issue because my orders are usually small enough to travel by air via DHL, instead of being stuck at the ports on a cargo ship.

So here they are…FINALLY! My first few new designs of washi tape. I love how they came out and I love the quality of the adhesive. Not to name any names, but a few of my friends have had washi tape made by a different manufacturer and their hardly stick to anything. There’s nothing more frustrating that washi tape that simply looks pretty but does not function. Yes, washi tape is supposed to be low tack and non-damaging…but not to the point where it completely rolls off the second you put it down. When I received my rolls I did a few tests where I would reposition and reapply the same strip of tape over and over again to see if it remained sticky and IT DID! So if you would like to grab a few rolls for yourself, these are now available in my shop.

Banana Bunch!

The banana sticker in my shop has had many makeovers over the years. Each version I’ve made of them have sold totally fine, but definitely not a bestseller like the Tiger Sticker. I just can’t seem to settle on one that I “love”. Here are the two previous versions of the sticker:

The previous versions were all peeled bananas, so I thought to myself “I haven’t done an unpeeled banana yet. So I spent today working on yet another version of the banana sticker…this time, not only did I decide it wasn’t going to be peeled but also that it was going to be a BUNCH! One banana just seemed so lonely, and I thought it needed some friends.

I get all of my stickers made by Stickerapp. They’ve been making my stickers for the past few years now, and I love their customer service. They’re great if you want to order smaller quantities of stickers. The company itself is based in Sweden, but their smaller orders ship from their facility on the East Coast. My friends who order much larger quantities from Stickerapp say their orders ship from Sweden. Their turnaround time is pretty great too. I’ve gotten my orders in as fast as a week; two weeks at the slowest. If you're looking to get custom stickers made, I highly recommend them!

Giant Robot Neko Show

I have a piece in the Neko Show opening at Giant Robot tomorrow, February 12th.

Flyer Image by Angela Ramones

Live Opening Tour and Artwork Available Online: February 12th, 11:00 am

Visit In-Person Wednesday – Sunday 12:00 pm – 6:00pm

Check out #GRNekoShow on Instagram for sneak peeks

Featuring Artists: Aaron Brown, Akiko Stehrenberger, Allison Bamcat, Alycea Tinoyan, Amy Matsushita-Beal, Angela Song, Angela Ramones, Blake Jones, Brenda Chi, Cassia Lupo, Cate McCleery, Christian Leon Guerrero, Clara Winnie, Cleonique Hilsaca, Danni Fisher-Shin, Defective Pudding, Erick Martinez, Eric Nakamura, Eric Nyquist, Eunice San Miguel, Eunsoo Jeong, Federico Tobon, Felicia Chiao, Flat Bonnie, Hooked Hands, Jaime Herrera, Jaime Soto, Jayne Hirata, Jen Tong, JP Neang, Juliet Toma, Juliet Schreckinger, Junko Ogawa, Justine Lin, Kaylynn Kim, Kelly Yamagishi, Kevin Chan, Kevin Luong, Kyoka Wakamatsu, Lisa Kogawa, Lisha Tan (Lil’Chotchke), Luke Chueh, Made in Chynna, Mari Inukai, Michelle Wanhala, Mister Toledo, Natalie Andrewson, Nellie Le, Nikki Longfish, Olivia Pecini, Paperobott, Po Yan Leung, Priscilla Moreno, Sam Grinberg, Sanaa Khan, Sarah Pinner, Sean Chao, Sean Keeton, Susie Ghahremani, Theo Ellsworth, Thinh Nguyen,Tiffany Liu, Yoskay Yamamoto

This year since they’ve decided to combine celebrating the Year of the Tiger with the Neko Show, I painted another tiger for the show. This piece features a tiger balancing two tangerines on its head. Tangerines symbolize happiness and prosperity, so I named this piece “Double Happiness Tiger”.

Hey 2022!

Happy belated New Year and Lunar New Year! As with the beginning of any new year, we tend to make plans for fresh starts or aim to set new plans/habits into motion. One of my goals for many years has been to restart my blog, but it always ends up being false starts. I think part of the problem was that I was trying to bring parts of my old blog with me. But importing old content from another blogging platform always led to a lot of formatting issues. It often took many hours to fix all the problems, so this time I decided to start completely from scratch.

We’re now 4 days into the Year of the Tiger and I’ve been painting tigers nonstop for the shop. It’s no surprise that tiger things are in high demand right now. I’m actually having a hard time keeping up with demand. I feel a little bad when I tell people new mini paintings are available in the shop, but they all get snatched up within the first 2 minutes of them being posted. I have no control over that. The best I can do is let people know to keep an eye out for the next update. If you would like to receive emails with shop news, feel free to join my newsletter.

Happy Lunar New Year

Welcome to the Year of the Ox! I've been really into drawing these business cats in cars lately. I love that they're just zooming around town. Some people have told me it reminds them of Richard Scarry, which of course my work is influenced by his work.

Hello 2021

Every January, I spend the month just thinking, reading, and reflecting. I take the pressure off myself to make new work since most people are still recovering from the holidays. Time has become very weird since the pandemic started. Most days I forget what day of the week it is. Something about spending so much time at home has made me want to start blogging again. It helps give structure to my week, but also helps me put my thoughts and feelings into words. 

It's been a little over two years since I last updated this blog. I think for a while I thought "what's the point?" since I doubt very many people still read blogs regularly. But I think it's always been more meaningful to me to keep a blog and have a place for my works in progress to live aside from Instagram. It's definitely a lot easier to search through the archives of a blog then endlessly scroll back in time in the Instagram feed. 

But I also see the potential for my blog to be helpful to others…especially other artists who are just starting out on this very long journey. I think we've gotten too used to Instagram showing us the pretty end product or a very curated/staged looking work in progress shot. Let's bring back the messy desks and the paintings that didn't quite work out. I also think I've spent enough time painting that I can now share some of my tips and techniques, and general art supply knowledge. 

I don't really know how consistent I'll be with updating this blog, but I'll try to stay on top of it. Here's some of the quick paintings of Sebastian that I did real quick in my sketchbook. These were painting with the HIMI gouache set that's available from Amazon for $17-25. It's nowhere near comparable to artist grade gouaches like Winsor & Newton or Holbein, but they're really fun to use. I did a lightfastness test over the Summer and most of the colors held up pretty well. Prussian Blue, Magenta, and Violet experienced the most fading, but those colors typically aren't lightfast anyway.

Happy Holidays

2018 has been a great year! I’m very grateful for all the support I’ve gotten this year and for every opportunity that came my way. I’m taking a few days off for the holiday, then it’s on to thinking about 2019. In the meantime, I wish you a very happy holiday! See you in 2019!

Tic-Toc-Catbus

The past few months have been quite the rollercoaster ride! At the end of August, I left one of my part-time jobs. I was working two jobs on top of being an artist! I felt like it was the right time to move on and that I had reached a point where I was no longer gaining anything from being there. So now I work as an (almost) full-time artist and part-time for my friend's stationery company, Small Adventure.

Soon after CatCon, I was busy with all the cat portrait requests that came trickling in. And I was also getting invited to participate in more gallery exhibitions. Time was flying by and the next thing I knew DesignerCon was here. I didn't even get a chance to post an announcement about it here on the blog!

These days, I wonder if anyone even reads blogs anymore but I continue to post anyways because they're really more for me than anyone. They're just the perfect way to document time in one place. If you ever want to see more works in progress, you can always follow me on Instagram.

This has been one hell of a growing year for me. All I can really say is: Thanks so much for following along and for all your support! 

Here's a piece I recently worked on for the 3rd Annual Totoro Show at Giant Robot. It's actually of my favorite character from My Neighbor Totoro that isn't Totoro himself—Catbus.