The January 2012 Tutorial Discussion

[Gare]

That's terrific to hear, Stygg. Yes, if you extend a line, or a plane, toward what's called its vanishing point, you can deduce where hidden lines are, and making a glass box wouldn't be all that hard.

You could pack fine china in it, and then break all of it at once...

I've met the "purists" lurking out there, and that's why I bothered to write what I felt was a pretty fair argument for tracing when needed. Not that I like to argue. I also don't like "tracing" to be synonymous with "cheating", because it begs the argument that a "shortcut" is necessarily "cheating".

Okay, if you were running Manhattan's 4K marathon and went off course to shave some miles, that sort of shortcut clearly breaks some rules.


But "rules" at best are "Soft Science" when it comes to artwork. Foreshortening, perspective, a lot of mathematical truths can be used to deceive the audience's eye, and it's up to the artist whether they want to be playful, imitate life, or present an optical illusion,. you know?

_______________

Bill, I used pan-dimensional cardboard to build the box in that original image. Its corrugation is rotated 90 degrees on its backside, and actually the bottom of the box shows end-grain corrugation.



Re-did it, damn your hide. Can't go teachin' stuff with technically flawed illustrations!




My Second Best,

Gary

[jvila]

Ok,
I agree about tracing over a photo for daily works, in my case I'm fighting trying to learn from scratch how to shade, light, perspectives, etc to be able to improve my own drawings and leave copy for the opportunities I want to challenge my skill from other point.
Now, I'm fighting with box perspective and I can't realize how to know the size of one part of the box when the box is open, I'm attaching a picture to try to explain.
About shading and lighting, yesterday I had a go to the original box and I achieved a decent result but not as good as I want to get, I faced a lot of problems about imaginating how the light falls over every part of the box, how much light I should apply on every face, how the box casts the shadow, etc, sometimes I feel that it is a try and error process and I'd like to ask you what the process is, which steps do you follow if you have to do the same task?, I imagine that experience is fundamental, but is there a process to follow?, how do you know where the light hits or reflects?.
This game is getting awesome and very addictive.
Best regards

[jvila]

Gare,
Froget the doubt about size, I faced that problem before, I need to proyect top-side view and lateral view to get the size.
I've already fought with this on http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthre...ive&highlight=
Best regards

[Gare]

If I had a job to illustrate a box, and the box needed shading from a specific point of view, and I didn't know how to draw from my memory for this specific assignment, I'd get a box, pose it, get a camera, take the picture, and then use it as reference, or trace over it in Xara.

1. You cannot depend entirely on imagination. Why? Because our brains don't store information about a scene as math. We store information as impressions, and these can be false or misleading. Mathematics was made up by mankind. The real world sometimes follows man-made mathematics and other times it ignores it!

2. There are two properties that make up almost everything we see: the shape of something (the geometry), and the texture (what the shape is filled with). Many times the texture is more important to recognize an object than its geometry.

Think about this one, please. It was reinforced by the owner's manual to Pixar RenderMan. The example they gave was a modern office. An office is just a bunch of rectangles in perspective. There was a time when the most geometrically complex object in an office was a telephone.

Most of the "stuff" in a scene that makes it recognizable is the texture, to which there is shading, possible reflections (truth: not many real word objects have highlights and are reflective).

So, to a Xara user, we can break down scene description to shape (outline), and texture (fill).

What I've try to do is provide the shape so you people could concentrate on the texture. Javier, do not concern yourself with getting the shape of the box perfectly. I have done this for you.

Just examine and try to make an interesting texture in Xara. I think Frances can tell you that using fractal and plasma fills for color and an additional layer for transparency can make a very nice texture, especially for a rough object like this box.

—g

P.S. Do an Amazon search for books on drawing with perspective.

[handrawn]

Hi Gary

I have sadly no time to do the tutorial.. but I can't resist jumping in on the subject of 'rules' - in the context I know of only two that are 'set in stone' :

in art 'be original'
in design 'be accurate'

tracing will sure help you to be accurate

actually I rarely 'trace' in as much as pencil sketches I scan and use as a base are for guidance only - the inking is redrawn on a higher layer and follows the flow of the pencil design but does not follow the pencil lines precisely

I mention this because in art it is often as much bad news to try and trace too closely as it is not to trace at all

so when such as I say 'don't trace' what I mean is interpret the line paths as well as everything else in your own way, which strictly speaking is not tracing

design visualisation probably requires that you do trace most of the time

[Gare]

Hi Steve—

Good, meaningful words.

Actually, you know what? I'll ink a pencil sketch and then scan it. And aside from a little clean-up here and there, I don't interpret at all, because the original was by my hand, and I still do a lot of stuff intentionally by hand than the premeditation that seems to be forced when I use digital drawing and paint tools.

How about a correlate: Try to produce, don't try to reproduce.

[handrawn]

I'll go with that..

and yes I know what you mean regarding the original being in the hand - overworking kills art too

[jvila]

Gare,
Produce needs to know how lights and shadows work, that's my problem, to me is easier to reproduce but I want to "Produce", just to learn that's all.
Is great to know you use reference material, I thought the challenge was creating from our minds.
One thing I sometimes use is the 3d extrude to get the right lights and shadows, but complex parts can't be created with this method.

Apart from that I was wondering how can I get the way light falls over the object surface, many pictures have subtle gradients and it is difficult (at least for me) to know from where light comes, one way I thought colud be possible is to change its contrast level to be able to see gradients in a stronger way and appreciate how light impacts on every part.

Best regards

[Gare]

This is beginning to sound less and less like a computer graphics thread, and more like...*gasp*...a seminar on Art!

Oh, lordy, lordy, save us all...



To be serious for a moment (because that is all I am capable of), I'd solicited ideas for tutorials before becoming host of the Xara Xone, and there was a remarkably large, positive vote toward teaching art as I (try to) teach Xara.

Make no mistake: Xara is a deep program, but it's easy to access and probably the most intuitive graphics software available at any price.

Which begs the question: Doh! I've had 15 years to learn which tools do what, and now I want to do something meaningful with them!

It's easy for anyone to evaluate; people do it all the time. "This tool is good."

It's not so easy to put a tool to practical use. "Okay, I know this tool is good. Now what is it good for?!" (to end a sentence with a preposition, a copy editor would throttle me).

Um, we're having a lively and hopefully fun time on this thread because I'm stressing theory and not technique. You people already have your own techniques.

Do we want to go this way?

—Gary

[jvila]

Gare,
Art sounds great in my ears, you're doing a great and interesting job pulling the fence a little higher every day, that's great.
Thank you very much