Leon Magazine and Painted Clothing

Leon Magazine is one of the premier menswear magazines in Japan. I was commissioned to create custom designs that I then hand painted on a limited edition set of shirts for sale through the magazine. Each shirt also came with a customized tag with the customer’s name, and an edition number.

In the process of making these shirts, I also created and hand painted the other potential designs shown here, which I used for other clothing items for bespoke sales.

These designs take traditional American tattoo style as their starting points, and most incorporate California-specific flora and fauna into the final pieces; for Leon, in particular, I wanted to bring a new twist on traditional Americana to the Japanese market.

This is the final back panel design for the Leon shirts, and incorporates species found in Southern California, including a queen palm, a date palm, a matilija poppy, and a bush sunflower.

This design uses a traditional tattoo swallow; it is also based on a barn swallow, which can be found in California.

This traditional octopus design uses the native California two-spot octopus as its basis.

The back panel and arm panel on the final shirts.

Leon web store photo of the final shirts for sale.

This design was one of the three California-based designs I offered to Leon Magazine. This one is based on the flora and hills that can be found in Joshua Tree and includes Joshua trees, a Mojave mound cactus, a beavertail pricklypear, a dollarjoint

For the desert version of the shirt design, I offered a version of the Western diamondback rattlesnake in lieu of the octopus on the sleeve.

The desert version of the shirt included a skull rather than the barn swallow on the front panel.

The third version of the California shirt I offered was the Northern California design. This includes coast redwoods, California poppies, and the typical East Bay hills and fog.

The NorCal shirt version included a great white shark design, as these animals breed just off the coast of San Francisco.

The NorCal shirt version used a mountain lion rather than the barn swallow on the front panel.

I also designed a stack of darumas and painted them onto a vintage jacket for a customer.

This design combines a tiger with a traditional Japanese daruma.

Leon Magazine and Painted Clothing

Golden Gate Whisky Labels

Travel Stickers