We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Keoni Paakaula a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Keoni, thanks for joining us today. Are you happy as a creative professional? Do you sometimes wonder what it would be like to work for someone else?

I am very happy as an artist! I make most of my income from tattoos, but like most artists I have a need to create and get ideas out. I enjoy making stickers and apparel on the side. as well as painting once in a while.

I think about getting a “real job” all the time. Ill see ads for jobs or just people working interesting jobs I never thought about before (like the guy who rides on the back of the truck and puts out/picks up traffic cones), and Ill think about going to apply. I think its because being an artist doesn’t always feel like work, most of the time its just hanging out with friends in our art cave being goofy. So when I am presented a “job” opportunity I briefly think that I am unemployed. I also do like the thought of not having to handle the “business logistics” you need to deal with being an independent artist. Health benefits are always enticing too.

2023 I was very slow with tattoos so I did start applying to a bunch of jobs for supplementary income. This was when I realized I may have a hard time going back to regular jobs. I would get call backs for interviews, but kept getting denied because I kept prioritizing tattooing over the other jobs. I kept creating and tattooing during this whole process and ended up thriving so well, My girlfriend and I ended up taking a trip to japan where we were filled us with even more inspiration to create when we returned home.

I am sure I will continue to think about regular jobs forever. Im not at all against going back but like stated above, they probably wont have me back so “YO HO, YO HO! AN ARTIST LIFE FOR ME!” hahaha.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My name is Keoni but most people call me Puff. I have been tattooing for about 10 years now, currently at Beholder Tattoo. I also make stickers, apparel an other arts/crafts with my girlfriend with our joint brand “My Kaiju Hawaii”.

I started out doing graffiti back around 2006 , making friends in the art scene here in hawaii. One of my friends began tattooing and I got some work done by him and met his mentors and the shop. A few months later I received a call out of the blue from a different friend telling me his cousin wanted to call me about something. It turned out his cousin was my other friends tattoo mentor and he was calling to offer me an apprenticeship. I turned it down at first because I didn’t think I had the precision required to tattoo. but after a little reassurance, I decided to start hanging out and apprenticing after work (at the time I was a delivery driver). That was around march 2015, 8 months later I got fired from my other job for showing up late cause I was tattooing till 2am sometimes and having to work at 6am. Ive been tattooing full time ever since.

I try not to specialize in any specific tattoo style. Nowadays I see a bunch of people starting out tattooing and they only want to specialize in one style, but I feel that mindset hinders your growth as an artist. You should be open to learning anything and everything you can then applying that to your own creativity, that’s how you build your own style. I have been told by clients that they like what I do because I can adapt to fit their needs. I prefer to do anime, video games and pop culture tattoos being the comic book 80s nerd I am. But I also love biomech and evil/dark theme stuff. along with doing realism, floral, cutesy stuff too.

I’m probably my biggest critic so I rarely am happy with most of the things I produce. I am very proud and happy to be part of the crew I was lucky enough to join up with at Beholder Tattoo when they first opened. This shop is so much fun to be a part of and everyone helps everyone feed their creativity. I can’t wait to see how we will grow in the future.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

Being able to make a living off of something that I have a primal urge to create. When I had a regular job, I was still constantly draw, paint, and just craft stuff. I have been doing it since I was a little kid. Its nice that now I can make a living off of that

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

I wish I had the ease of digital creative tools and technology we have now back in 90s. Its so easy now to draw something on the screen with your pen or sculpt something with digital clay and then just upload it and apply that creation to an endless list of mediums like stickers and apparel, or 3d printing crazy props and sculptures. Recently I whipped up a banner design and uploaded it at 2am. It was ready to pick up the next morning at 11am. Thats crazy to me, I cant wait to see what technology will allow us to do in the future..

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @pufftronic and @mykaijuhi

Image Credits

I own all the images provided