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

**tensai** · May 5th, 2006, 08:37 PM

shinryu - thanks for commenting about the site. about the photos - its a bit wierd. these to me are finshed works, not snapshots or anything, so i actually feel like you would be using my finished illustrations for this. it took me a long time to get them exactly like this. i dont mean to be all precious about them but i have the same thing when people use photos from national geographic or some other strong and finished (art) photography. im also now trying to arrange funds to make a book with these. so to be honest, yes i guess i mind. i can help you out with reference though. i have put some great building reference on the CA wiki before, so check that out. and if thats not enough i can look around for more links if you need.

**Flaskpost** · May 5th, 2006, 08:40 PM

this one is really great man! really great!
http://www.lokjansen.com/sketchbook/lok370.jpg

**Idiot Apathy** · May 8th, 2006, 06:53 AM

http://www.lokjansen.com/sketchbook/lok371.jpg
If I had any doubt you were in japan, it's gone now.

Really enjoying all the different techniques and ideas you have going on here man, variety is well 凄い.

**pennington** · May 8th, 2006, 11:39 PM

wow! cool bag. checked ou tthe site, nice and fluid, easy to navigate, and great content! so who's shoe company is jan jansen?

**Strife25** · May 9th, 2006, 02:36 AM

Yo Tensai. Where about are you in Japan. I live in Tokyo(shinagawa ward) myself. Anyways went through your site. Love the work. The photos were great. Love the illustration page. Anyways yeah.....

**Hyaloclastics** · May 9th, 2006, 03:25 AM

Hey man,wus up?
Love the portraits and the line quality of them.And yes,your cityscapes are as crazy as ever!

**tensai** · May 9th, 2006, 10:08 AM

Flaskpost - wassup man? glad you stopped by. your comment made me do city portrait in the same/similar style. not finished yet, but im posting the lineart.

Idiot Apathy - dont doubt it man. hehe. im enjoying expoloring all the different techniques a lot, but also feel i should show some things focussing on, but still exploring a certain technique.

pennington - thanks for the feedback on the site. apparently its working smooth enough. at least nobody has any technical problems. JJ is my father. its been great fun working together.

Strife25 - yo man, we should hang. im in ogikubo, 5 minutes west from shinjuku. close enough i would say. have you been to nakano? its next to me and there is mad otaku stuff overthere, really nice to see. send me a pm or mail me through my site.

Polonoid - thanks for dropping by man. gots me a new, smaller but looser cityscape. hope you like it.

just finished taking photos of this one. dont know if it came out too well cause i didnt feel like taking out the tripod, so i was standing on my chair, turning and swaying around. but since this is pretty warped anyway, i guess its alright. im trying to get stronger and simpler visuals, and letting go of precision a bit. making it rougher, exaggerate what i see, more chaos. i like where its going, but its not there yet.

hope you like,

**Helzon** · May 9th, 2006, 10:18 AM

hope you like,

Likey...likey very much!
Great sense of chaos and jumble man. Can't wait to see more.
Cheers!

**tensai** · May 9th, 2006, 08:37 PM

alright helzon my man, here you go - im posting some crops. the small size makes it a bit more difficult to read than in real life. so im putting this up while i decide on how to colour this guy.

any comments and crits appreciated.
oh, and since all the stars are back up - where did my six star rating go?

**Shamagim** · May 10th, 2006, 01:29 AM

Hey, long time i don´t take a look in this thread...but 5 pages, wow.

I can say I do love you ink work, specially when you try to capture that kind of architectural chaos you have there

.

I´ll i can say is that seem to be sketching like crazy, and is totally paying off

, keep it up, congrats in your 5th page

.

**Eriboss** · May 10th, 2006, 02:40 AM

hey man, shit I love your lines. The city stuff always blows me away dood, seeing them crops gets me all giggly with excitement like a schoolgirl hehe.
your portraits and people are reallly coming along too, i especially love http://www.lokjansen.com/sketchbook/lok370.jpg !
keep up the great work dood,

Eri

**tensai** · May 11th, 2006, 12:27 AM

Shamagim - thanks man. you have come an incredible long way i would say.
glad you like that mess i try to pass for art.

Eriboss - ill try.. i like where the newer looser simpler cityscapes are going. again, still experimenting with it.

did this semi-monochrome version. warped the lines a bit in ps to make the composition a bit stronger. im not sure if i want to keep it like this or add some neon juice to it. think i might need to add some more contrast too.

comments and crits greatly appreciated

**bwkeough** · May 11th, 2006, 07:26 PM

oh, excellent! I love the gnarled web of cables and conduits. I'm looking forward to seeing more progress on it.

**guggemmaneuver** · May 11th, 2006, 10:33 PM

I couldn't look at this for long, made me feel like i was in a bad part of town, that it was about to start raining, and that the tangled mess of wires was going to come crashing down on my head at any moment. great sense of forboding, and the color choice is rock solid. If i had to critique anything about it, I'd like to see maybe just a tiny bit of variation of color between the blocky forms of the buildings... you know--> different architectural styles, how when buildings like this are built you have a concious effort on the part of the architects / planners to make it look like a bunch of different buildings smushed together. Any chromatic shift would necessarily be very slight, but i think it would help mix up the composition just a little bit more. That said, i love what i'm seeing here already. this thread always inspires me, and though i do enjoy the smell of clean undies, the art keeps me coming back tensai!
joel

**madplanet** · May 11th, 2006, 11:51 PM

Originally Posted by guggenmaneuver

I couldn't look at this for long, made me feel like i was in a bad part of town, that it was about to start raining, and that the tangled mess of wires was going to come crashing down on my head at any moment. great sense of forboding, and the color choice is rock solid.

This is exactly what I liked about this piece, the character of that bad part of town. i was wondering how this would look in color, but I think that it makes more sense this way, it fits the scene better. A hint of color could be a good contrast. Not much, though. I also liked the blue sketches from earlier.

**Matt Smith** · May 12th, 2006, 12:08 AM

Thats a cool looking piece. Only thing that I notice was some of the perspective is off. One hte first sign, I can see underneath it, but the others I cant. ITs not a big issue, can always say that it adds to the beat up look of the alley.

**johnny78** · May 12th, 2006, 04:25 AM

just wanted to srop by

Madplanet mentioned your line quality. He´s right.

Wait... those faces are life subway drawings! ...Great, I love your economy of lines. How do you draw those people without being intrusive as they seem to look at you and people usually don´t like it if somebody stares at them?
Just one look and them nailing it down?

**Alday.J** · May 12th, 2006, 07:48 AM

This last enviro's sketch is so good, lines are so loose and the whole pic still readable. Bravo !
sayo' aniki !

J.

**tensai** · May 14th, 2006, 05:54 PM

thanks for all the comments, will answer later today but here is some quick thumbnails.

comments and crits as always greatly appreciated

**Shinryu** · May 14th, 2006, 07:18 PM

Originally Posted by tensai

shinryu - thanks for commenting about the site. about the photos - its a bit wierd. these to me are finshed works, not snapshots or anything, so i actually feel like you would be using my finished illustrations for this. it took me a long time to get them exactly like this. i dont mean to be all precious about them but i have the same thing when people use photos from national geographic or some other strong and finished (art) photography. im also now trying to arrange funds to make a book with these. so to be honest, yes i guess i mind. i can help you out with reference though. i have put some great building reference on the CA wiki before, so check that out. and if thats not enough i can look around for more links if you need.

no problem, understand

recent work has been killer, keep showing

cheers

**bwkeough** · May 14th, 2006, 09:36 PM

I like that city on stilts idea...any chance it might be on titanic tank treads like the mobile gantries NASA uses to move the space shuttle rocket around?

**tensai** · May 16th, 2006, 03:51 AM

ok, some replies

bee-dubya - im gonna do another version i think. im doubting to either make it more graphic / flat, so that i could silkscreen it for example, or to add some colour accents to it with some added contrasts etc. so, ill probably try both versions.

gugg - great great crit. i think ill have to go in and add some colour variations and a bit more contrast. the colours that are there now though seem really straight forward but i couldnt get it right for a loooong time. much to learn still.

madplanet - i had never seen it my self as soo forboding while doing the drawing, but you are right. its just that i dont associate dark places so much with danger or fear. probably a sign that ive been living here too long...

matt smith - good call. i deliberately chose to not worry about it too much, because i wanted to have that beat up/unstable look etc. but i should have drawn at least a couple of those signs so that you could look underneath them.

johnny78 - thanks man. your lines are really good too.
in the subway when i start drawing people often i have to finish them when they just got up, or somebody is blocking my view. so sometimes i have to relie on visual memory. or sometimes people just really start staring at me, or the people sitting next to me start looking at my sketchbook, and then at the guy im drawing and back.. some people dont mind, some people do. i try to be as inobtrusive as possible, but not to the point where i dont draw anybody.

julien - thanks man, glad you like that one. i want to do a lot of these again.

shinryu - cool, thanks man.

bee-dubya 2 - thats exactly it man, this city is slowly cruising around the world...

crappy update with some more thumbnails.

comments and crits as always appreciated.

**Master 25 Days** · May 16th, 2006, 01:34 PM

you definitely got skills with a pencil. simple and efffective lines. Very graphical quality to them w/o losing structure.

I'm not sure I like all the blacks in the thumbnails of the buildings, but that seems to be your style. I haven't done enviromentals much, but one thing I notice some people doing a lot is using people to show the scale of the buildings.

**bumskee** · May 16th, 2006, 08:32 PM

I always forget to check your SB for some reason, I love that urban city look that you do so well in your cityscapes.
http://www.lokjansen.com/sketchbook/lok380.jpg
It's awsome, love it. Have you seen KakuRenBo? I remember seeing that anime and thinking, Tensei does enviros much like this. Hope you keep pushing it. cheers Min

**tensai** · May 17th, 2006, 12:09 AM

Master 25 Days - thanks for dropping by man. about that black - its not my style man, im just experimenting a bit with silhouettes as a different way for thumbnails.

bumskee - appreciate the comments coming from you man. the new landscape master.

i hadnt heard of KakuRenBo, its stupid here i am in tokyo but im not seein that much japanese movies here. i checked it out and ordered the dvd though, looks exactly like something i can watch over and over again...

**Alday.J** · May 17th, 2006, 05:49 AM

Man, let's talk about your influences this time: You're not influence by Japanese artists, are you ? For some reasons, I found a little Moebius/Bilal flavor in your work. Looks like Matsumoto on some point. Not that obvious, just remind me all these guys. Am I correct ?
Nice updates, here. Refreshing.
J.

**pennington** · May 19th, 2006, 02:36 AM

you can't call that a crappy update, i could never do anything like that. i can't even tell what that is, is it marker and gouache? anyway they're really cool. and it reminded me to do something i was thinking about for a while. ttfn.

**purb36** · May 19th, 2006, 05:12 AM

yo man, what up?
i love what you did with that tokyo ghost street illustration; the colors give it oodles and oodles of (noodles and) atmosphere. can't wait to see the finished work. Nikuman definitely needs to be on a shirt, keep one waiting for me if i ever stop by tokyo; ill let you know. you make the environments look interesting...i should draw some sometime. take care man, and have a great shuumatsu.

**bwkeough** · May 21st, 2006, 05:04 PM

I really like that last blue update. but, wtf, you're not spending your birthday uploading more sketches?!?

have a good one, buddy!

**Zord** · May 22nd, 2006, 01:30 PM

Haha ^ at bwkeough. But I wanted to drop some props here and show appreciation. But Tensai I'm always looking through this thread, your work always oozes a crazy mixture of style, rhythm, and pulsates like an underground city. It seems almost animated, ever thought about dabbling with that? Your work would mesh well with some kind of animated short about the urban sprawls of Tokyo against a backdrop of hip hop production. And also the last update, even if you're not too fond of it, has tons of character. I'm digging the roughness that each one shows, especially the last one against the blue backdrop. They seem to have tons of graffiti-styled influence. But have a good one man, and cheers!