Post #691945 by Gene S Morgan on Thu, Aug 29, 2013 7:36 PM

I'm on page 20 of this thread and still getting an average of 150 hits a day. Usually I would find it hard to stop with that many people still looking in, but I have a couple of projects going on so I am going to have to at least slow down a bit. I want to thank all that followed my silliness. I am sorry that there was so much drama that distracted the aim of what I was doing. I tried hard to ignore most of that stuff, but I did realize that even the guys who somewhat supported me did not like what I did either. Makes me wonder who actually was following me. I'm definitely a different animal and expected some conflict. But, as I said before, I was a musician for over 2 decades and the audience here is no worse than some I had to handle on stage. It reminds me of that guy in the audience who after a drink or 2 would start yelling: “Play some David Allen Cole!” Anyone who ever really listened to me for more than 10 minutes would know that I ain't ever about to “play David Allen Cole”. So with this last post I will make for awhile I will address some of the issues that bring some people to believe I might play David Allen Cole or do stuff any other way than I know how.

Here is this guy again. I promise this will be the last time I do a long step by step for this tiki. I never really planed to keep this thread going this long. I just came to give folks a little taste of a couple of Ipad apps I discovered. I know I might have called them tutorials in the beginning, but I'm not really artist enough to teach anything about art. I find cool stuff and like to pass it along to others. I thought some simple little step by steps might send some people in the right direction to produce there own tiki images with some cool tools. It is all fun guys …... I applied a different texture to this guy and away I went.

It is funny how I start with some off the wall color combo and end up going somewhere completely different. Folks have questioned why I do not try to make my images more like paintings. Somebody said I should do stuff more like Brad Parker. What I do works for me. Brad Parker is a cool artist, but I do not try to produce images like him, or want to be him, and let's face it, I don't have the talent or ability to be him or any of the other great artist here. What I do is what I do. I never call it great art. What you see here is tiki portrait designs. I started this style for t-shirts. I never expected any of this to hang on anyone's walls. But, this last group of images have been fun and I have been making them 9 by 12. Some of them I like well enough to think they might not look to bad on a wall.

I introduced some brown and some green while leaving some purple. I think it is nice when you can add some age and patina to the tiki. Anything made from wood or stone left out in the elements will get some color over time. I think that is one of the things folks object to in my style. My approach to tiki design is an aged rustic look.

Bringing up the contrast and bringing back more purple I think gives the tiki an old worn look. You can see the age in the wood. I think it is pretty funny when folks say my images aren't tiki. In many ways I believe they might be too much tiki. I try not to exaggerate features so far that they become cartoony. Even my cartoons are clean and straight forward. I have studied this forum and have run across many times where someone makes this long list of what is and what is not tiki. (The “is not” list is always longer) Then I visit mug sellers web sites, and see all kinds of crazy stuff. In other tiki art you can see everything from zombies to surfboard riding tikis (Got nothing against either one, but I don't make the rules. Wendy's zombie hand Bob was just too cool). And, my somewhat stylized, but serious tikis are on the “not tiki” list. I talk about creativity a lot. Creativity can be defined as “not following the rules”. That's me folks …....

I just upped the saturation a bit and the colors are stronger. Finally an image I really like. If you don't like it, that is OK too. This is how I do it. Now, if you don't like it because it is digital, please come into the 21st century. This is the future. It amazes me the number of folks who reject images just because they are digital. And, even though so many hate digital they have suggested lots of software and apps that I should be using. Believe me I have tried them all and use the ones that work for me to do what I want to do. I'm pretty new to computers. I made my first digital graphics in 1969 on a Univac 1004. It was Snoopy of course. Man, I could never have been able to imagine making images on an ipad back then, and I read so much science fiction at that time. It is magic folks. What a wonderful thing to have access to so many cool tools to make fun imaginary things. For free or a couple of bucks you can have an art studio app where ever you go to play with when those creative urges kick in. Hope I was helpful showing some of the ways you can do that ….....