Let's hit Pause and back up for a second, because this vine lesson is doing exactly what it shouldn't be doing for most of our members here.

Rule #1 in good Art composition is to go from the general to the specific.

Huh?

You begin with an idea, you get a visual reference if you feel you need one (hint: beginners and many advanced artists do), then you rough out the idea, and then address specific issues.

The shadows are a specific part of the composition, they should come last, and I see some stumbling blocks at the beginning of this art process.

First, don't rush it. This forum will be here tomorrow, so don't get so anxious to post that you post something half-baked, okay?

Second, if you want the vine going in and out of 3D text, fine. But compose the text, make an interesting composition out of it. Make the characters rotate left and right and a little randomly as though someone had tossed them onto a table. Use an interesting font, too.

Then work on your vine. however, as Frank points out, you need to consider the source of light in the scene, and spend more than 2 seconds with the Shadow tool and consider yourself done. Shadows are a subordinate element of a composition, but that doesn't mean they're trivial.

Which means you give quality time to every facet of a composition and quit looking for a "quick fix" that will get you home in time for supper when you create Artwork. Does anyone have the foggiest idea how I and other accomplished artists and designers on TalkGraphics really sweat the details and fight the urge to post our "little child" before it's done?

Now, here's a "think outside of the box" approach to this vine thing. We have mounted something that has grown (pardon the pun) into a very, very challenging, visually complex work of art. How do you calculate the shadows so they're accurate? How do you rotate the letters so they lie on the same plane as one another?

You use a reference, specifically a real-life one.

Got a dollar store or a similar budget five and dime near you? Terrific. Get into the car with $2 and go there.

Buy:

• Those refrigerator magnets that are letters of the alphabet.

• A bag of pipe cleaners which will be the stand-in for a vine. They call them "twistys" or something similarly inaccurate these days because no one smokes a pipe except Popeye in 2013 I guess.

Take your kid's desk lamp, go into the kitchen and set up your scene. Play with the light until the shadows are interesting. Then either develop a good memory and go back to your PC and use Xara to recreate your reference scene, or take a snapshot of your work with your mobile phone, import the jpeg to Xara, lock the photo, and go to the design work.

I couldn't be more serious about making a reference photo or scene. How do you think DaVinci worked? Norman Rockwell? How about Big Frank?

Just because you have a computer doesn't invalidate methods artists have been using since the first cave drawings!

Here are two reference pictures. don't simply copy them because then you're copying my reference pictures and not going through your own personal creative process. Just look at how the light falls on the objects; the sun is supposed to be coming into the scene at about 8am.

If you can get something like this look, then you've taken a big first step into:

1. The process. If you don't have a process, you're going to be lost as you imagine more and more detailed pieces.

2. Making stuff that's truly "3D" and not just extruded text. These reference pictures look as thought the text is IN the scene, not simply o top of the scene. Why? Because from the very beginning, the scene was composed to look dimensional. Then the vine, then the shadows, it's all calculated, it's all planeed, it's all part of an individual's process for making art.

I think that's a worthwhile thing to strive for in your work.

Give it a go, and take your time.

Click image for larger version.  Name: xone vine.jpg  Views: 143  Size: 34.4 KB  ID: 94914

My Best,

Gary