Painting and Sculpting Tiki on the iPad and other crazy stuff

The right textures can make an image old and rustic looking. The final image with it's light blue /white highlights over a brown/red sculpt and the over the top texture background give the feeling of an old weathered relic. And, those are the best kind of tikis to me. I'm always very happy when it all comes together so well like this.

https://tikicentral.com/uploads/73658/5216c134.jpg

I was once told by an art instructor that if you put pink in a painting it will sell. When I go to galleries I always look to see pink. I was drawn to your multicolored tiki with pink! Wendy

Thanks much for the pink tip Wendy ... I guess I'll have to paint everything pink from now on ..... Gene

OK, this is some real craziness. I have been thinking about this for awhile. On my PC in the Sculptris program I took a sphere and distorted into an log shape.

In another program I drilled a large hole in the center. I won't go into detail about how I did that because it is complicated computer stuff. I covered that in my earlier Sculptris thread. Do we have a cup?

Not much detail in the tiki. I was just experimenting to see if this was even possible.

Looking down from above and the tiki detail shows through a bit on the inside much like it did on my earlier 123D Creature sculpts. Since it is not intended to be the final mug, just a prototype to be molded for clay, I did not worry too much about that.

Just a little more detail added. My idea is have this 3D printed and make a mold of the print and cast some ceramic mugs from it. A couple of problems. Something this size would cost a bunch of money to have it printed. Actually Shapeways will make a print in ceramics. How they do that I do not know, but what I do know is they charge a fortune for it. Since some of my pendant experiments did not come out as good as I hoped for, experimenting with something like this might cost more than I can talk my wife into. So this will have to be a project I put on hold until I get my own 3D printer.

See the green ball in the top center of the program interface? That is the material setting. You can glaze your sculpt with different materials. They affect the color, shading, and glossiness of the surface. You can even make your own materials in Photoshop or other graphic program. This is a material I made called Pea Green.

A strong purple material.

Red with a bright light above. Materials are fun ….....

I think I like the ones without all the texture better, I dig the last bright red one... reminds me of a cross between tiki and a demon kabuki mask. I wouldn't worry about the interior of the mug having intentions from the outside, I think most of them I have seen do anyways. I wonder if there isn't some way you could cast molds from the ones you get from these companies and then make them out of some kind of material yourself. Actually I think some of these would look pretty cool cast in transparent colored resin. I dunno, I am sure you probably know more about that stuff... I am just a humble painter. :wink:

Thanks for your comments Tigertail ... I really like your idea of clear resin. To make it hollow would require a more complicated mold than a ceramic mold. I worry a bit about them being food and drink safe. I have trouble getting a really smooth surface with resin. But, they might make cool candle holders or lamps. Thanks much .... You got me thinking ... and that is so dangerous .....

Yes, this guy again. I wanted a little more detail before I sent if off to the 3D printer. I brought the Ipad sculpt into Sculptris in my laptop. I cleaned it up some and in an effort to make friends here I added some cracked wood texture that folks love so much. I sent it off to Shapeways this time.

It was hard to get them both in good focus at the same time. This new test I had printed at 2 inches as compared to the 3 inches on the other one. I really need a printer of my own. All this waiting for the mail gets on my nerves. If I had a printer I could make a dozen test a day.

This smaller size and finer detail has brought back the trouble I always had with my earlier pendants. Air bubbles in the resin seem to collect at the small detail causing pits in the final pendant. Next to these pendants are a couple of my earlier designs. I use a gray car primer as a base coat and then antique with a dark color. The antiquing really makes the pits show up. Oh well, it just makes them look more rustic. I took Wendy's art teacher's advice and finished them off with a pink dry brush application. Dry brushing is my favorite part. It really brings the sculpture to life. My wife says she still thinks the 3 inch size is the best, so I guess I will have to send away another test.

God Tiki Damn GENE! Im lovin the vintage style pendants.
Straight outta da sixties. Nice stuff!

Glad you like them mp .... I'm old .... I remember the 60's better than yesterday .... must have not done enough drugs .....

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 ….....

It's Coe, David Allan Coe.
Cole is for Slaw, as in Cole Slaw.

[ Edited by: tikiskip 2013-09-16 06:10 ]

I want to apologize to folks who checked in yesterday. I do in no way condone vulgar language. So nasty and so sad. At least it is gone now, but I feel my thread has been soiled by that nastiness.

David Allan Cole Slaw is a crude, mean-spirited, redneck, bigot. And even much worse than that as well. I am none of those things. You may understand why I want nothing to do with his music. I do not live in that world and am so sorry for those who do. They tend to be folks who want to pull everyone else down to there level.

If you do not know what I am talking about, I'm very glad.

I was going to ask what happened and who this Coe guy is... but I guess in this case ignorance is bliss. Have you painted the two new 3D prints yet Gene? I was wondering how they turned out? Very curious about the larger one in particular. I just watched "Hell's Half Acre" for the first time, great little noir flick, I saw at the end when the bad guy gets gunned down in front of a tourist store in Honolulu something in the window that kinda reminded me of the spirit of your work.

See the little carved coconut face in the right side of the window? Your work actually looks more tiki than that, but it to me has that same sort of 50's/60's surf tourist feel if you know what I mean? Stuff that was made for the masses of tourists, but still had a bit of unique island charm. That's the sort of thing your work reminds me of, and to me that is not a bad thing at all, I view a lot of the Coco Joe's keychains and whatnots in the same light as well. :)

For those not here at the time what I posted was a link to
David Allan Caesar salads Rodeo song.
I also posted the lyrics to said song.

Am not a huge Coe fan, you brought him up.
But the Rodeo song was one we liked back in the day.
It has a good tune and in this song Mr. Coe directs all
of his anger to a guy named Johnny.
They do not say if Johnny is black or white, but only that he is a one ball man.
Whatever that is.

Read the above as Groucho Marx would.
And don't think of it in a "man this is all hate filled" way, Think Funny.

I will lay off Gene.
BUT... I can't let you try to twist my words.

Tiger Tail I always enjoy your post. You spend more time thinking about things than most folks. You always come up with some clever way to illustrate your opinions.

I have not done much lately with making pendants. It is frustrating for me to have to ship designs off and wait for prints back and then start the process over again when it does not turn out as I pictured. I admit I have some ADD issues and lack patience. I am anticipating getting my own 3D printer this winter and that would help a lot. I count on my wife to help me decide what works and what doesn't. She wears a different tiki pendant everyday and checks how each looks on different color clothing. I colored these very light (trying to get a bone look) for dark clothing.

You sent me on a real adventure when suggesting my tikis reminded you of Coco Joe's key chains. I dug up every web image I could find to try to understand what you meant. I hope it wasn't this guy you meant. I don't think mine look quite that primitive. The brow line is too crude and those colored plastic eyes really turn me off. It is so tacky.

I finally found some key chains. The groups were small and hard to see, but I did not recognize anything like my stuff here. And, more more colored plastic eyes, yuk.

I like this guy. The mouth could be better and there is to much going on the forehead and the brow line could have been better. The eyes and nose are really cool though. I think if I would have presented one of my tikis with that head shape the resident tiki “experts” would have got out the ropes and threatened lynching. (they have done it before, not to me, but I'm not the only one they bully. I read the forum)

I like this last guy. Looks kinda like the creature from the black lagoon. He is pretty fun and the forehead is well designed. Of course the plastic eyes would have to go.

The coconut head in your movie still I think is pretty far from anything I have done. I never do painted eyes. When I was first married and a poor college student I had my mask collection hanging on our apartment wall. (I have been collecting mask from around the world for over 50 years. My house is full of them. At that time I only had about a half a dozen) I bought a coconut head almost exactly like that one and hung it on the wall with my mask. A couple of months later I took one of mask off the wall to dust and it fell apart in my hands. It was eaten up. I found a hole in the coconut head and when I broke it open I found a termite nest. It had to be there when I bought it, termites are not common here in the cold Midwest. My mask collection ended up reduced to just a couple. So, seeing that coconut head again gave me nightmares.

Thanks you for your post. As you can see I really follow through when someone make constructive criticism.

Sorry Gene first off I apologize for the late reply: been very busy and the weather around here has not been making it easy to get stuff done.

As for the Cocojoes keychains; you had a few in your post that I was referencing like the "Black Lagoon" guy, but I remember seeing some other ones similar but a bit more surf/Big Daddy Roth sort of influence made of the same material and having the same plastic jewel eyes. I am thinking now that they must have been Cocojoe knock offs, and have not been able to find pictures of them. Now its just going to bother the holy heck out of me till I find pictures of them. I remember as a kid in the 70's they had them in little cardboard counter display boxes at a store I used to frequent, and even as a kid I thought they must have been leftovers from an earlier era.

Sorry for the wild goose chase there. I will keep looking for them, but I have a horrible feeling they are rare possibly a one off or from a defunct company. They did have the cheesy jewel eyes you don't like though... I think most of the tiki keychains I remember did.

Meanwhile I look forwards to seeing more of your 3D prints, I think those are pretty cool and have a very 60's retro vibe. :)

Tiger Tail .... Heard about your weather ... hope you came through without too much damage ... I got relatives in the Pacific Northwest .... Been there ... Like Bill Cosby used to say ..."I got a Rain Tan"

I like doing research. You did me a favor sending me into the past. I learned stuff I did not know. I am always happy to do that .. Thanks ..... Gene

https://tikicentral.com/uploads/73658/523a5d0c.jpg

I'm with MP, I love these designs that you've done. Very cool, Wendy

Thanks much Wendy ......