DaRUMA—

I take a lot of photos, and share very little, so as I was scrolling through my Lightroom catalog I took notice of this photo from 2023. I now would like to take a moment and send….

A sincere thank you to Jin, for snatching up one of my later “Poboy” works. Jin has been a good friend and client over the years. We first met when he inquired about pinstriping his Scion Xb(Gen 1) to give it that American hot rod flair. Over the years, I’ve continued to work with Jin, and several of his clients, adding custom pinstriping, along with other hand painted works, to several VIP style vehicles, dressing them up for automotive showcasing. Those works are processed through my custom paint business—Pinstripe Shop. I’ve also designed and tattooed a large piece on Jin’s back— definitely an IcON work. His tattoo being one, of just a few, unique tattoo works that don’t fit neatly within the Hidn Studio brand where I create traditional Japanese tattoos.

The work Jin took ownership of is an uncatalogued panel work on aluminum of which I’d been exploring the layering of shapes that go together and make an overall design. The other four works on aluminum remained very traditional in a pinstriping design sense but with this design, as with the current IcON works, I’d intentionally worked in a Japanese daruma doll into the lower region of a folic shape—not purely decorative but illustrative.