Tensai Tokyo Sketch Thread - Sept 28 Exhibition + Commissioned Work Tests!

[tensai]

koroshiya001 - thanks for stopping by! glad you enjoyed it.

just a quicky update of a guy that i think felt real real tired...



comments and crits greatly appreciated!

[madplanet]

Hey man, I hope that you keep showing the cityscapes; along with the faces and train sketches it's a nice balance. I find it interesting to see the personalities in both the organic and inorganic, they are both alive in some way. That last guy does look tired by the way, but that dark line across the top of his head is a bit distracting. I'm nitpicking, though. Everything looks great.

[glikster]

thanks for stopping by my SB!!

These are seriously inspirational. I loved seeing the design process, and your cityscapes always rock.

[tensai]

madplanet - thanks for stopping by, and thanks for the crit. i agree about the lighting on that guy. it was marker though, so not much i could do about it.

glikster - thanks man, glad you enjoyed.

im gonna have to get my ass in gear and post regularly in my book again.
im doing an illustration for a chinese magazine that is not out yet. the first issue is about lifestyle and i wanted to do a local cityscape with a biggass baby siting in the middle of it. the babies toys are all these highly coveted gadgets that are the same size as the buildings. im doing this cause i sort of want to comment on the post-modern chinese boom architecture that all looks like toys with pinkand jade tiles combined with mirrors and polished chrome for columns etc. the toys and architectures lifespan is both really short.

i guess that is not clear, but i think it will be once i add more elements. here is the line drawing of the cityscape though:



ill be adding sonyplaystations, ipods, mcDees and chinese propaganda style baby tomorrow. or a first colour test. whatever.

comments and crits, as always, appreciated.

[tensai]

first pencil outline for babay. im not sure about this guy yet.




comments and crits appreciated

[madplanet]

Another great cityscape, Tensai. It kind of hurts my eyes to stare at it too long, though! Did you say that you were going to add color to this? That will look great, I think, the color would make some of those buildings really pop out. Of course, just doing the sky would add a lot. It almost seems strange looking at your detailed cityscapes and then going to something like the baby, which is very simple. Not bad simple, just less line. But, you really captured something in that face using limited line, so I would say that so far, it's a success.

[cartoonfox]

WOW!!
this one is simply jaw-dropping. how long did this take you? i'm amazed at your skill and patience : ]

keep up the great work,


peace

[Zord]

Holy shit, you are Godzilla-like when drawing city scapes. God damn. I'm really enjoying the progress on the "fog city." Me and a friend were looking through here and mentioned that your name was "genius." Clever, man. Keep it up up!

[JustinBeckett]

Hey, thanks for taking a look at my sketchbook

Anyways, nice work in yours As you probably already know, your environments are much more efficient then your portraits and such. And some of these enviro's/city skapes are absolutely amazing. Must be very time consuming

See ya around.


Justin.

[runtosaurus]

Man you must be crazy for doing those cityscapes! I can't even comprehend the attention span you must have to have to do those. They're definitely cool though! Those last few marker sketches are neat too. What also really stood out to me were those single-line city/roofscape sketches. I'm not sure I've seen something like that before but I like them. I also agree that your cityscapes are stronger than your portrait type stuff, but even those last few marker sketches show improvement, or maybe it's just because of the value that makes them pop out more. Regardless they have good character. Keep it up!

[pennington]

holy smokes great cities!!!!

[tensai]

madplanet - its the first step fot the total ill. outline of the background. the baby is just a sketch still, and i added some but not all props yet. i guess things will become clearer when it gets more finished.

cartoonfox - line drawing took me a couple of days. i couldnt draw so much for too long at a time cause my wrists are a bit fucked up right now. so i have to do some other things, then draw again, etc etc. thanks for stopping by man.

Zord - you got it, its genius cause everybody calls me that way over here. well actually it was a reference to the gza from the wutang clan.

JustinBeckett - hey man thanks for stopping by. yeah im working on the portraits and stuff, but i think a lot of it has to do that all the peeps are just sketches, while the cityscapes are finished work.

runtosaurus - glad you like the oneline sketches. the portrait type stuff is for to relax and just to do something else than the cityscapes.

pennington - cheers man.

ok, as for the WIP of the ill for the chinese magazine, i did some basic placement and initial colouring, just to see where i want to go:



ill probably redraw the baby but i like the kind of poisonous/neon kind of glow he has. things might change a lot later on, as i have a tendency to get bored at the end of a piece, maybe cause they take so long to make.

i will tune the colours but i like the direction its going, and i will put lights and vague shadows in/on the buildings. next up is adding some more objects, im thinking mao zedong as a statue/action figure, and a big tv/advertisement screen. if you know some other gadgets i could add, please drop a message here. im still looking for other stuff.

comments and crits appreciated

edit - pic taken down cause of bandwidth

[Lunch]

looking awesome, i'm a big fan of your cityscapes. the urban feeling is overwhelming.
the glowing baby made me think of keith harings work:
http://www.popartuk.com/g/l/lgkh63.jpg

[Zord]

Oh damn, the master of cityscapes busts out another one. The neon green baby's color is fine too, it's like a nuclear baby. I can't think of any objects to put into the city, but if i think of any i'll let you know. And one last thing, Wu-Tang are bad ass and ain't nothin' to fuck with.

edit: I just thought of something you could maybe include in the city. What if there was some sort of car company logo? I dunno, just a suggestion.

[strych9ine]

These are damn hot man, the cityscape sketches are beautiful. So intricate and involved... you can tell they are a labor of love.

[Boogieman]

Your cityscapes are hot as hell, but you got enough people telling you that already. My favourites of your drawings are your trainsketches, especially the ones from your jan 9th post and that jan 13th marker guy. How do you get the space do to them anyway? I've seen movies of those tokyo trains and they been PACKED!

[sve]

Hello, tensai, I'm very interesting in how your last idea will turn out. I love it so far. If you want some of my impressions so here.
Baby looks a bit flat right now and not totally naturally placed into this picture, you need to create shadows and some other connections, interactions between baby and this busy city.
As an idea for one it would be great if that lighting from the cities lights was reflecting on the baby, and again shadows from buildings produced some combined effect on all objects ( you are probably already confused trying to understand me, sorry.).
I see this baby rendering in a realistic manner, but of course it's your baby . I'm looking forward too see the finished picture.
Would be great too if you are able to catch the mood and atmosphere of night in a big busy city. And maybe the season too. In this I mean the sky, it's hue, coolness or warmness of colors. Looks wonderful though already, it's just didn't exactly connect the huge baby to current moment.
Well, I hope i didn't do more harm trying to say my impressions. Ignore all of this if it disturbs your way forward . I love this piece already, actually.
Sveta

[tensai]

Lunch - thanks, the link didnt work for me but i think i know what you mean. i used to have a t-shirt by keith haring with a crawling yellow baby on it almost 20 years ago (!). maybe it slipped in.

zord - you gave me an idea, i dont think car logo as much as a giant chinese suv/toycar would be good. there was this SUV called landwind and it had really bad safety records (i mean more than other SUVs). im gonna try out putting that in there. thanks!

strych9ine - thanks for dropping by man. you got one hell of a sketchbook yourself. the cityscape are a love/hate thing. it takes a lot of energy and halfway through the linework im always convinced its crap. ten minutes later im high on it again.

sve - thanks for all the input. a lot of what you said is planned in already. this was a first colour experiment. buildings are going to have shadows, and lights on inside, to catch that night atmosphere. i hope i have time to finish it. the baby im not sure yet. for now im going for a similar style as the rest. looking forward to more comments when i upgrade (hopefully at the end of the day)..

made a small unrelated citysketch in between, just to get my mind of things.



more soon!

[Silveraxe]

The bamboo shoe is so cool!! I'm not a person who goes crazy about open, leather striped shoes, but that design would be spectacular as a Japanese style flip-flop (or whatever its called, dunno the exact English word XD )

Also the last sketch is really nice.. Man, you're one crazy person!! All those cityscapes are brilliant. I'd die before I even finished one building with that intense amount of detail eheh (well i'm a lazy bum too, so that figures)

[max1975]

love the robot in the cityscape...on the whole, i'm impressed with the staggering amount of detail, but I hope you're gonna add a lot of color to the buildings, or tone down the other things...don't like them sticking out the way they do now.

[sve]

Beautiful sketch, tensai, somehow very lyrical. All my childhood I kept losing keys from our apartment and spent a lot of time standing and looking at our windows like this. That's lyrical part .
Very pleasant sketch, nice feeling of height, so perspective is great. You need to write tutorial already how to draw buildings in perspective. I need to read one badly.
Sveta
It would be great in watercolors, or inks, or pastel, I think.

[jtheanswer]

As everybody else, I am amazed with your cities, the details and the buildings. Also I liked very much the trainsketches.

[tensai]

Silveraxe - glad you like the bamboo shoe. im also not a fan of open leather striped shoes, but when i see this one on a foot, i like it. its now being produced and soon should be hitting the stores.

max1975 - yes, hopefully things will integrate once i add lights, neons and shadows to everything.

sve - i had a lot of perspective drawing when i was studying architecture. in fact thats almost the only drawing class we had. if you want to learn from scratch, there are two really good books on perspective you could read. but it all doesnt help if you dont practice with it. the books are 'Design Drawing' by F. Ching, or 'Creative perspective for artists and illustrators' by E. Watson. both are good. first one is more technical but is not only about perspective.

jtheanswer - thanks, i hope i have time to do some more trainsketches soon. i think i may be rusty cause its been so long...

ok, quick and maybe unimpressive update.



im putting in shadows on two different layers. have to get started with it because its such an overwhelming amount of work. for this reason i do them on separate layers, so that i can tweak the value and colour later on, without painting everything in again (imagine that). i added one layer of darker tones, and im just now adding in a darker darks layer in the lowe left corner. its a bit hard to see right now, on this scale and with this intensity, but ill tweak contrast of the three separate (base, darks, darker darks) later on. i also quickly tested putting in some lights inside the buildings.

its not very exciting right now but all this stuff takes time. a lot of detailing etc.

not satisfied with the baby outline yet, let alone the colouring there. got to redo that. the suv is in the wrong place. and i need to add more stuff anyway. i do like the brighter colour scheme of the robot.

ok, got to get cracking.

thanks for the comments everyone!

[Shinryu]

Great work mate, your city scapes are always fucking great and that last one is looking excellent, would really like too see more drawing of people if you got any or when you get them done, thanks for sharing

cheers

[Silveraxe]

Neat! It must be a wonderful feeling to have your own design made into a real merchandise.

[tensai]

Shinryu - thanks man for dropping in. would love to do some more finished people ills. its all been sketches and drawings up till now. maybe ill have some time when this last cityscape is finished.

Silveraxe - its certainly is. one of the great differences with working as an architect. with buildings it can take years and years. interiors are better of course but still...

ok quick update.



didnt get nearly as much stuff done as i thought i would. worked on the shadows and lighting and threw some new stuff in, like mao statue, big-ass tv. did some searching and found this hugely popular but banned taiwanese soap series. im putting that on the tv screen i think, just as a minor element. still have to redo the baby. oh and started to add this typical cheap modern chinese architecture thats being pooped out everywhere. (that glow was a quick try, will have to redo that.)

chinese architects work like crazy! ive worked freelance in hongkong and while i was working on concepts for a huge 5 star hotel complex, constructors would call us and demand to know where to put the foundation, cause they wanted to start pooring concrete asap.

tv, mao, chinese toy building and baby all unfinished. have to start finalizing them. afterwards maybe ill add neons, and i might adjust colours quite a bit, see if i like that better.


as always, comments and crits appreciated.

[tensai]

alright, times up!
i might tweak a bit over the weekend, after looking at it with fresh eyes, and i have some files with slight colour variations, but i think its finished. the lines look much darker overhere due to the small size i guess. but i think the image should now speak for itself, so ill just drop it here.

comments and crits appreciated,

edit - fresh eyes and printing this thing out made me strongly reconsider the green guy. i wanted to give him a sort of neon glow, but he stands out too much, and he looks like a baby hulk (wtf).
i also read voraz's crit just now, thanks for your comments man, it seems we agree largely. i will consider this tomorrow or the day after again, and make adjustments.

edit - pic taken down cause of bandwidth

[voraz]

Hi Tensai, I really like your cityscapes, they are great. In this picture I think the city is great but I really don't like the green kid there and also the yellow arches. I guess there's a point for them to be there but in my opinion it makes the picture worse.
Just my opinion
cheers
Fil

[bwkeough]

Lok -- this sketchbook is really taking off! I knew I recognized your name before but I didn't connect it to those crazy city designs until today. your figure drawings are getting better and better. it's like salaryman said back in november: no crits cause you're on your way.

I am going to add my name to the list of folks requesting a photo of someone modeling that shoe -- hot!

[Hyver]

sweet stuff in here, such diversity!
i'm awed by the massive details in the cityscapes (i'd love a sketchtrade for one of those)
impressive progress on the figure sketching too btw