02-28-2011, 02:56 AM
Yessir, Gary ... I'm still up, too!
The smile on my face grew as I read through your latest post. "He's really thinking ... and getting it," I thought!
As for the drive-thru portico, my thought was to maybe experiment a bit with a "quickie" stand-in for the portico, leaving some portion of the roof of it open, allowing some light to reach the back drop surface. I have a sneaking suspicion that an auxiliary light source (an LED on the front of a vehicle or under the portico would tend to call attention (not what is wanted!) to a difficult structure/backdrop lighting situation (although the protico at my bank's drive thru teller does have lights under it, they are not apparent in the daylight hours.) Some experimentation will be needed in this area ... a little pensiveness beyond the borders of the common, everyday thought containment vessel.
And it should be now abundantly clear that a lightened color and reflected light are two different animals, altogether!
It was your fourth paragraph, though, the one regarding "backdrop philosophy" that brought the big smile to my face. I can see it coming together in your head.
Think about the Corporate Logo used by the company called EATON ... we see the whole name, but there is visual trickery afoot here! There is play between positive and negative shape going on and yet, the human eye glides right over it like individual "positive" letter forms. It doesn't read the dropped out "negative" spaces as "non-letters."
With our backdrops we are essentially playing the same game , only with representations of the world beyond what is actually being modeled rather than with letter forms on a page. Therefore, painting in an indication of the "positive" forms (the basic building shapes, with diminishd color intensity or saturation, diminished hue (making it somewhat "washed out") and merely an indication of detail using mostly visual cues of light and shadow, but no actual hard-edged detail, the eye will glide right on by as it follows the main subject, a nicely painted, detailed and weathered locomotive and several similiarly presented freight cars as they pass through the scene.
We will be glancing into the gallery room as we walk down the museum hallway, not sitting on a bench in front of a Salvador Dali painting, pondering what kind of drugs he was on to see all of those melting pocket watches! (And if you should sit on that bench one day and really look ... those watches are not very highly detailed, but there's enough there to make your eye tell your brain that it's a pocket watch having some serious structure problems!
The smile on my face grew as I read through your latest post. "He's really thinking ... and getting it," I thought!
As for the drive-thru portico, my thought was to maybe experiment a bit with a "quickie" stand-in for the portico, leaving some portion of the roof of it open, allowing some light to reach the back drop surface. I have a sneaking suspicion that an auxiliary light source (an LED on the front of a vehicle or under the portico would tend to call attention (not what is wanted!) to a difficult structure/backdrop lighting situation (although the protico at my bank's drive thru teller does have lights under it, they are not apparent in the daylight hours.) Some experimentation will be needed in this area ... a little pensiveness beyond the borders of the common, everyday thought containment vessel.
And it should be now abundantly clear that a lightened color and reflected light are two different animals, altogether!
It was your fourth paragraph, though, the one regarding "backdrop philosophy" that brought the big smile to my face. I can see it coming together in your head.
Think about the Corporate Logo used by the company called EATON ... we see the whole name, but there is visual trickery afoot here! There is play between positive and negative shape going on and yet, the human eye glides right over it like individual "positive" letter forms. It doesn't read the dropped out "negative" spaces as "non-letters."
With our backdrops we are essentially playing the same game , only with representations of the world beyond what is actually being modeled rather than with letter forms on a page. Therefore, painting in an indication of the "positive" forms (the basic building shapes, with diminishd color intensity or saturation, diminished hue (making it somewhat "washed out") and merely an indication of detail using mostly visual cues of light and shadow, but no actual hard-edged detail, the eye will glide right on by as it follows the main subject, a nicely painted, detailed and weathered locomotive and several similiarly presented freight cars as they pass through the scene.
We will be glancing into the gallery room as we walk down the museum hallway, not sitting on a bench in front of a Salvador Dali painting, pondering what kind of drugs he was on to see all of those melting pocket watches! (And if you should sit on that bench one day and really look ... those watches are not very highly detailed, but there's enough there to make your eye tell your brain that it's a pocket watch having some serious structure problems!
Mission accomplished!
And you are correct ... it's difficult, if not impossible, to "noodle in all kinds of little details" when holding a new, freshly sharpened, Number 2 yellow wood-cased pencil
by the erasure ferrule, at arm's length from the piece of paper!
by the erasure ferrule, at arm's length from the piece of paper!
biL
Lehigh Susquehanna & WesternÂ
"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." ~~Abraham Lincoln
Lehigh Susquehanna & WesternÂ
"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." ~~Abraham Lincoln