Painting and Sculpting Tiki on the iPad and other crazy stuff

Ok, now something not easy to do with real paint. In SketchClub you can actually create your own brushes. It is an easy thing to do but pretty hard to explain. I have made many texture brushes. This one is somewhat like surface cracks. I use it to age an image.

Now I go to another layer. (Something else that is possible in digital painting) I paint in some foliage and grasses on this background layer, using more brushes I have designed myself. Using layers allows you to work on that layer without affecting any other layer. That way, if you mess up, you just delete that layer and start over without losing the rest of your work.

Hi Gene. I am about to embark on learning to do digital art, so I am quite interested to see what can be done with just an ipad without even using a stylus. Keep up the good work!

I put some strong bright texture over my background.

Thanks Gwen .... I think you will find digital art fun. If you are going to use an iPad I would suggest joining an art community like the one with SketchClub. There are lots of helpful artist there and good tutorials and classes. Good Luck .... Gene

I thought the last background was too bright, so I just adjusted the brightness. I could have just hit UNDO and tried something else. Undo is one of the most wonderful aspects of digital painting. You can always get rid of mistakes without having to start over. You can't do that with real paint. Well, not very easy anyway.

A little finishing touch is the dark vignette I added to the edges. I could keep playing, but I think it is finished.

I just went through 4 pages of oyur stuff and find your technique quite interesting! I am trying to teach myself Illustrator but think the iPad looks cool. I don't have one but I have a Nexus tablet that's a bit smaller, maybe I'll search out some free drawing apps. I admire your patience! I'm no artist and I'm severely challenged in the patience department.

Lori ... thanks for checking out my stuff .... I have used most vector PC programs at one time or another starting with Corel Draw way back. I find it is an interesting method for producing images but never really got the hang of it until I joined SketchClub. (Though I'm really not very good at it) I have done lots of graphic on the computer, but I think I have improved a lot since I started using the iPad. Using a stylus and fingers really makes a big difference. A mouse or even a wacom tablet just do not very natural to me. I found following step by step some of the teaching videos on the SketchClub site actually caused me to change my methods. I'm a old guy, if I can improve I think anyone can. Good luck .... Gene

I try a lot of different styles and subjects in practicing my digital painting on my Ipad with the SketchClub app. I slip a little island culture into some of the stuff. This cartoon came to me in a dream, “It keeps me awake sometimes” to quote Steve Earle.

As a framed print I gave him a lei. Did it make him any sexier?

For the t-shirt design I lost the lei. Makes him look tougher I think. Easy to take things away when you are working in layers.

I'm always experimenting on stylizing objects. This was my take on palm trees.

So you want the sundown 15 minutes later. With digital you just multiply 2 layers together. It doesn't just darken the image, it darkens the colors, giving a more natural look.

OK, folks this is not at all tiki, but I wanted to illustrate to anyone who was thinking of trying Ipad or computer painting that a good online community can really help a person get better. As I have said I am not much more than a so so cartoonist, but by working this last 6 months and producing one image a day and following online tutorials, I have greatly improved. This image was a feature image on the SketchClub website today. A few images a day are featured. Hundreds are uploaded everyday ...... I'm sorry it is no tiki, but the Dude is cool too.

For sure .... THE DUDE ABIDES

I wish I was a talented painter, but I am not. The images I produce are not meant to be great art. What I make are designs, illustrations, patterns, and humorous cartoons. I finds lot of uses for them. This next section goes away from tiki sculptures (I will soon get back to that) and more into pattern making. This method might inspire folks to give this simple technique a try .....

Now this is one of the coolest things about digital brushes. You can take a fairly high resolution image and turn it into a rubber stamp brush. This is a very simple tiki shield design I created myself.

Another simple design element

A very simple abstract tiki design.

So what is this all good for? Add some color and texture and stamps and you end up with a nice pattern.

I tiled the pattern and used it for a background. I took the first tiki and colored the stamp brush in a very contrasting color. I think it makes a nice combo.

Nicely done

Thanks for checking my stuff out Holler ......

Now, I'm gonna take this pattern stuff to another level. I want to show how this can be useful and fun.

Another simple design element stamp.

Another simple tiki stamp.

Again some color and texture. Does it look interesting? And, what good is it?

I got to thank Dawn Frasier (Sophista-Tiki) for talking about the SpoonFlower web site. My wife saw some of my designs and said: “Fabric pattern!!!” SpoonFlower will take a digital (or a painting digitalized ) image and make cloth out of it. This tiled version of the pattern might make a shirt.

A little fancier stamp design.

It is lots of fun to combine stamps, colors, and textures and see what you can come up with. Using the same stamps can produce all kinds of different patterns.

This is what it might look like as a fabric pattern.

As you can see by my stuff, you do not have to be a great artist to produce some interesting patterns. Are they authentic island cloth patterns? I do not pretend that they are, but they kinda get that feeling and are also somewhat unique. Another stamp design …...

Three stamp brushes and some color and texture and I came up with this. Playing like this can get habit forming.

Same three patterns and different colors …. Somebody stop me, I'm loosing sleep making these things.

This is what one possible way the patterned could be tiled would look like.

Off to SpoonFlower and a couple of weeks later and fabric is laying on our dinning room table. You may notice the color is a bit different. The photo is off somewhat because of those florescent energy saving lamps that we have to get used to because they are so good for the environment even though the mercury in them is unbelievably nasty. My camera did not want to white balance very well under them. Also the color faded a bit after the fabric was washed. The color just wasn't quite right, but we still liked it.

This is my friend Happy Tiki wearing the vest my wife made using the fabric. We live in the cold Midwest and he prefers vests over Hawaiian shirts. You can tell by his face he liked it a lot.

Gene - It looks like you are getting better and finding uses for your art. Good job!

I'm digging the fabric prints. The Spoonflower fabric fades from washing that quickly?
That is a bummer!

Thanks much Luna ... I keep trying ....

Thank you Sandra ... I don't know what to say about the fading. I have only tested this one pattern so far. Have had lots of experience in the past with t-shirts and my wife is always careful and wash in cold water the first time. It was a bit of a bummer ....

On 2013-05-09 19:20, Gene S Morgan wrote:
Three stamp brushes and some color and texture and I came up with this. Playing like this can get habit forming.

Gene, Im digging this one! This would make cool tapa for a lamp

Nice work Gene! I've been meaning to check out spoonflower as well!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKr-WKT4aiA

mp .... I like the lamp idea ... I'm not sure most folks would think my designs would qualify as tapa cloth ... Thanks for that compliment ... My wife is trying to decide between that design or another one for curtains and shower curtains in our bathroom ... Our bath is a kinda tiki room in our house .....

Robert ... Oh I can just imagine some of your images as fabric designs. You can get full size images as well as patterns done at spoonflower. As I mentioned to mp they could be made into curtains. Folks would love to have some of your paintings as room decor. And, I love your Peanuts images. They would make cool fabric designs as well. Thanks much for checking out my thread.

Tikiskip ... I had seen that video before ... Are you in the band?

I'm not posting any new stuff today ... tomorrow I will show another way of creating a tiki image. I'll show how Happy Tiki came about.

I'm going to do another step by step to show where Happy Tiki came from. This time it will start with just some basic cartooning. Start with a light gray background. Using a darker gray and a sketching pen I make some simple features. By the way I do this using only my finger on my Ipad. Modern technology is just so fantastic. I had a pretty good imagination as a kid, but in a million years I could never have predicted this.

Another feature of digital art programs and apps is they have a mirror feature. So anything you draw on the left is repeated on the right. That makes starting easier, but I usually shut it off early on in the process. Keeping it pretty simple here at first.