Post #468132 by tobunga on Fri, Jul 10, 2009 12:43 PM

Aloha everybody!

It's been months since I've posted new work... I don't know where the time goes!
Some of this stuff I've posted in other threads, but I'm gathering it all together here, plus posting new stuff.

Here's stuff I did for the Tikiyaki Orchestra's Lodge Night at the Mayflower Club in North Hollywood.
Since the theme was lodges and secret societies and such, I decided to do the Polynesian version...

I started with some Duk Duk Dancer figures.

Each one is 9" high and made from various materials, including felt and artificial leaves.

I also made some Aloha Jhoe's mascots, as they are stylized Duk Duks.

Each one is 9" high and made from various materials, including felt and flannel.

Then I made some larger Aloha Jhoe's figures, that also double as hats! The front fringe comes off, and they look really sporty and stylin'!

These figures stand about 17" high on their bases, and are made from various fabric, including felt, flannel, satin, with buttons.

This was also the debut of my Chocolatiki cookies!
There are currently three styles/flavors:

Chocolate Tangaroa

Mocha Hei TIki

Peanut Butter and Chocolate Marquesan

I was selling sets that came in a box that included a hand-rubbed block print of PNG inspiration!

The next batch of stuff I completed in time for the Hand Built show at Tonga Hut in April.

I happened upon two kid-sized skateboards and I immediately thought that I could turn them into something tiki. I had PNG on my mind a lot, so that was the direction I took.

I painted them with some PNG designs, both top and bottom, and finished them off with some polynesian-looking fringe I got from Kirby (Thanks, Kirby!)
The smaller skateboard is 18" long, and the larger one is 20".

I also made some mini tiki huts, which feature my first officially carved tikis, although they are only 2" tall. The Huts started out as bird houses, but with a little tiki ingenuity, I was able to transform them into mini-tiki huts, complete with marble-sized (well, actually, they're marbles) fish floats... for which I wove the netting myself. Now THAT was a fun task!

I had been toying with the idea of doing some colored pencil drawings on black paper, so I did one as a test, and I came out pretty good. I decided to do some more, and then as I am wont to do, I went crazy and made a bunch. I was very excited at the way they turned out... mysterious and moody... some of them even looked photo realistic! I was happy!

And then, since the show was the day before Easter, I decided, the night before the event, to do some Easter Island Eggs. It was a fun play on words, and people really liked them!

Each egg is 3" high. They are constructed of paper mache over a plastic egg, with a foamboard moai on the front, birdman petroglyphs painted all around, and a grass bow, or roof on top (I sort of thought the grass made the eggs look like little huts)

I was on a black paper/colored pencil kick, so I created an 8x10 drawing of Kirby's Rumpus Room, as a thanks for all the fun times we've had there. He liked it!

Then I made one for Grog, also 8x10, because he's so nice! It took a couple of tries to get it right, but I think it came out OK. I wanted to give his Grog character a 3D look, and I made the Moai look as if it was carved by Grog, using one of his mugs for inspiration.

I also got a commission from A Frame (Anders Anderson) to make a larger version (11x14) on one of the earlier drawings I had done. He requested a tangaroa in it, and I think it came out pretty good.

Then the Tiki Art Swap was announced, and it gave me the opportunity to work on some ideas I had for more plush tikis.

The first one I did was a PNG tiki. It's about 12" tall, made from various fabric including corduroy and flannel, with button eyes.

The second one was much more intricate, and I was very pleased with the way it turned out! This one was based on the Abelam style of tikis from PNG. It is also 12" tall, made of felt, corduroy, flannel and satin. I also decided that going forward, the plush tikis will sport a tag that is signed and numbered (1/1)

Each Abelam plush comes with a color version of the concept art I did while developing the idea for the doll. Each 8x10 drawing is original, in watercolor and ink.

Then I expanded on the plush tiki theme with a Tangaroa, also 12" high. It's made from corduroy and flannel.

I revisited my first plush tiki design, and after some debate, I decided to retire the original design. But Kuddly Ku II is here to take it's place! This version is more doll-like, as I was chagrined that most people referred to the first version as a pillow.

Kuddly Ku II is 12" high, made of corduroy and flannel and satin, with buttons on his nose.

I found a wooden hexagonal swag lamp at a thrift store and figured it would make a cool TIKI swag lamp. I stamped some fabric with the tapa patterns I had made a while back and replaced the yellow plastic that originally came with the lamp with my tapa fabric. I attached some bamboo on each corner, and then added a strip of burlap on the top and bottom. It came out pretty good, for eight bucks, the cost of the lamp!!

I then started working on some swag for the new Tikiyaki Orchestra album. Since it was all airline themed, I decided to do an activity sheet, like the kind they hand out to kids to keep them occupied on long flights. My idea was a paper airplane cut out in the shape of the 747 that was featured on the Tikiyaki Airways website. I did a drawing of the band also, that could be inserted into the top of the plane. I included the cool tiki drum, so there would be a tiki in it somewhere! These were included in the limited edition Jet Packs and Commuter Packs.

Here is the plane assembled.

Here is a larger version of the drawing of the band.

I also did a stamped mini-print to commemorate the listening party event that took place at Tonga Hut on June 27th. The image uses the color scheme from the album artwork and the piece measures 5x7. The prints were all signed and numbered.

Which brings us up to this weekend!
My mom's birthday is on July 5th, and this year my sister decided it would be a luau themed party. So naturally, I was all "I'll do the decorations!!!"

I wanted the decorations to be as authentic as possible, the only drawback being that I don't carve tikis... and I'm pretty dang broke at the moment, so there was zero budget... so I had to draw on all the (free) creative resources of my brain...

As the center piece, I decided to do an A-frame tiki hut and a moai. The 6' Moai is made of cardboard and paper mache, and was executed in about 6 hours (not including paper mache drying time). I never measured the A-frame, but it's probably 9 or 10 feet high. It was constructed mostly of cardboard, craft paper and palm fronds.

Both pieces started out as piles of material in the back of my car that were driven up north to my folks' house, with only a vague idea of how they were going to be constructed. I built both of them in the two days prior to my mom's luau birthday party.

I also created a sign for the luau. The party was called Loli's Luau. (my mom's name is Dolores, Loli is her nickname) It's made of foamboard and measures 30" long.

The week before, I made some tiki-themed wall hangings. They measure 17x26 inches and are constructed out of layers of foamboard. I made the frames to resemble bamboo, and the tikis to look wood-like. The backings are from a woven grass beach mat I got at the 99 cent store. All in all, fairly inexpensive for decorations of their size!





I wrapped twine around the handles of the war clubs to give them more dimension.

So that's pretty much what I've been doing these past few months. I've got a bunch of stuff in the works right now, but nothing at a stage that I can post anything coherent.

Mahalo fer lookin'!
Yer pal,
Eric October