Living in Lava Land

DJ Lance Rock & Foofa

rolandpacheco — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 20:00:57 +0000

If you are one of the lucky few that have no idea what you are looking at, I envy you. There is nothing comforting about people dressed up in strange costumes, jumping around and causing mayhem, unless of course it’s Godzilla. I had the recent pleasure of being introduced to DJ Lance Rock and Company while visiting Tonya last month. The same Yo Gabba Gabba video looped in the background for 4 days straight. I learned to keep my hands to myself, the importance of sharing and that talking vegetables will do just about anything to end up in your stomach. I also learned that Mark Mothersbaugh can also draw.

Zombie Lab, Series Two: Padma Lakshmi and Tom Colicchio

rolandpacheco — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 20:15:48 +0000

This is the first of Series Two, Padma Lakshmi and Tom Colicchio. In S1 I painted all the pieces at once, working on 4 at one time. For S2 I have painted the base of all 9 but am going to finish them all individually. Not because I’m lazy as much as I have other projects that I am working on and also wanted to spend more time on each individual piece.
S2 is less naked women eating one another and more playful zombie action. Padma and Tom is an example of such and is timely in the sense that Anna and I had the opportunity to have dinner and drinks with Ming Tsai one Wednesday.
Enjoy!

Ku (Ku-nui-akea), god of war and prosperity

rolandpacheco — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 19:07:56 +0000

Ku is one of the most diversified of Hawaiian deities in respect to having many facets to his character, which over time were considered separate gods embodied in one, so to speak. Ku was considered the male element and counterpart to Hina who represented female energy. Both were ancestral gods of heaven and earth who controlled the prosperity of the earth and the generations of mankind to come. Ku also presided over all male spirits as Hina did female.

Again the issue of dualities arise where you have an entity that oversees life but is also a progenitor of war.

Who said that the early Hawaiians weren’t a complicated bunch?

The word ku also means, “to stand, to rise, to extend” while hina means, “to lean down or to fall” which corollate to their respective male and female elements, respectively.
Ku was also considered the god of the forest and rain, god of husbandry, god of fishing and god of sorcery, among many, many others but he was primarily worshipped to produce crops, to bring forth food from the land, to bring about good will, and to kick massive amounts of ass when such things were required.
Fight!

Kanaloa, god of the sea & god of the underworld*

rolandpacheco — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 06:15:15 +0000

* Kanaloa was regarded as a facet, if you will, of the god Kane, the creator. Because the ancients often believed that akua (gods) could assume many different physical forms, with some incarnations often being polar opposites, it was only natural that the gods themselves would possess this duality within themselves.
Over time, as Hawaiians began to move away from polytheism (this of course was promoted by the missionaries as they attempted to convert the pagans to christianity), the distinction between the two facets of Kane were made more pronounced as the idea (of the missionaries) was to create an analogy between what was considered ‘good’ and what was considered ‘evil’, that was simple enough for the savages to comprehend.
Thus Kanaloa became known as the god of the underworld, as well as the god of the squids (apparently squids were considered bad juju back in the day).
The story of how Kanaloa became regarded as ‘evil’ had to do with the instance when one day Kane and Kanaloa sat down (still the same god, remember) and each fashioning an effigy of man. Kane’s immediately sprang to life while Kanaloa’s remained rock. Since we all know that sex, drugs and rock are all evils, it makes complete sense. And then we have the missionaries to thank for the most boring position! Yay progress!

Hi’iaka-i-ka-poli-o-Pele

rolandpacheco — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 04:34:21 +0000

Hi’iaka is Pele’s youngest sister and also the Goddess of Lightning. Not as hot headed as her older sister, she is still one akua that you don’t want trifle with.

Pele (Ana’ole Polynesian)

rolandpacheco — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 09:34:24 +0000

10:15 on a Saturday night…

A little something that I drew up today. I was lazy and ended up doing the color digitally.

Pele, Goddess of Fire

Here is my zombie army…

rolandpacheco — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 18:54:25 +0000

So, here is my zombie army.
A few weeks ago I decided to do a watercolor study on Bikini Girls. But after a while I thought, ‘Why stop at girls in bikinis?’. That was when I decided to paint celebrities instead. To recap, these are my celebrity zombie watercolor paintings that I just finished. They depict people that we all have heard of, and some of them are naked. BE WARNED! If you are the type of person that can’t stand the sight of an undead, half-naked woman, eating people, then what’s wrong with you? I mean, avert your eyes.
To those who would label me a zombie sexist, in my defense, I would like to state that in the next series I will be including men and other detestable creatures.
I made a video slide show of them all and posted it on my website as well as youtube, if you want to take a look you’ll also have to be subjected to my caterwauling. I decided to post them individually because I always screw up the album somehow.
Also, before anyone cries, ‘Pervert!’ I will have you know that Anna picked all of the models except for ‘Daddy’s Girl’.
These are on 11×15 Canson 90# cold press paper, painted with Reeves (series 2 will be painted with Holbein colors), and were all painted at the same time.
Enjoy?

Tako and mano battle

rolandpacheco — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 04:13:57 +0000

Finished this piece today, which was started 10 days ago. It is an octopus, batt…ling a great white shark. This person wanted something that spoke of his battle with…well, personal issues. He chose the octopus because to some degree the octopus is his aumakua, the shark because it represented the adversity that he had to overcome. It was tricky fitting in between his existing work, but all in all, was good fun!

Ana’ole Polynesian Tattoo : Modern interpretations of traditional Polynesian tattoo

rolandpacheco — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 03:53:31 +0000

Well, the fruits of my extensive labor on the subject of Ana’ole Polynesian tattoo is finally ready to be seen! My book, 158 pages with over 140 illustrations and definitions is now available on Amazon.com. I’ve spent the past 4 years refining my style of Polynesian tattoo and the last six months compiling it all into a book. Because of the enormous detail that I put into this project, I can say for certain that it almost killed me! No, not really, but it was a pain in the ass, especially the production end which was a nightmare. It really was all my fault since I chose to lay the book out in Adobe Illustrator and not InDesign, for no other reason than I like to make things hard on myself. What this means is that essentially every single page was an individual file, which I then had to import into Acrobat to create a master .PDF (the only file format that my publisher would accept). If any of you know anything about graphic production you will understand my stupidity. In any event, I only had to perform 3 rounds of edits and two proofs. I hope that my next book (what? did I just type that?) will go smoother.

I am directing all traffic through my site, for those who want to order a copy.

Aloha and peace!

http://www.rolandpacheco.com

Ana’ole upper quad

rolandpacheco — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 19:35:20 +0000

This gentleman walked into my shop and uttered the words that are music to a tattoo artists ears.
I had never before met this person and when he walked in last Thursday and began poking around my studio, I just assumed that he was simply browsing. Because of what he was wearing (a chefs coat) I couldn’t see any visible tattoos and figured that he didn’t have much work.
He looked at my books and asked me some questions about my availability as he had a small window of time to have anything done. As it turned out he was leaving in 5 days and of those five, he had one day to have anything done. He then told me that he had two full sleeves and the only open spaces left were his legs and back, the latter of which he was saving for a future piece. That was when I asked him what he wanted to get and he said those magic words, “Honestly, whatever you want to do is fine with me.”
Most people don’t know that these are the words that will often get you the best tattoo, since relinquishing control and letting the artist ‘do his/her thing’ ensures that the person doing the art will throw the best of their abilities into the piece. Of course you want to be sure that you trust the person and that you like his/her work. I can count on one hand the amount of my regular clientele who walk in and give me such free reign, so it goes without saying that I was completely caught by surprise to hear a total stranger utter such things to me.
He told me that he wanted it to be sizable and that he wanted it to be ana’ole, those were his two criteria, the rest was up to me.
I started with the basics and asked him what brought him to Hawi in the first place. He replied that he was doing a short internship at The Bamboo restaurant, learning some of the culinary secrets from the largest and most popular eatery in town. He then told me how much he had fallen in love with the island and that he someday hoped he could move here (he is from Wisconsin). He told me that he loved going up to Mauna Kea and that his favorite beach was Waipio. He added that his favorite animals were the hammerhead shark and the octopus.
So with that information I came up with this piece which took 6.5 hours.
Beginning at the bottom I put the Waipio Valley. There are three waves breaking upon the beach signifying good fortune. Above that is a maka nui or all-seeing-eye, a symbol that steals ones enemies spirit in battle and is a warrior symbol. Above that is a paka with two tentacles (which belong to the octopus in the third paka above). A hammerhead shark sits above that paka. On its head are 8 hibiscus each representing a respective Hawaiian island. There are FS and waves on the sharks back as well. Above the shark is an octopus with one of its tentacles resting on the sharks head, a sign of affection, not of conflict, to convey the harmony between his two beloved sea creatures.
Moving upward above the octopus in the sun shining down on a snow covered Mauna Kea peak. A gust of wind blows in from the east, representing the trade winds and the fact that he keeps coming back to the Hawaii. All in all this piece was to express his love of the island that he hopes to one day make his home.

Peace!

equipment used: 5RL/9RL/15M