Trompe L'Oeil

[gwpriester]

My wife and I dined at an Italian restaurant the other night which was covered inside and out with Trompe L'Oeil painting (French for to trick the eye). Trompe L'Oeil (also the name of the Xara Tutorials) refers to a technique of painting on walls, doors and other architectural surfaces to make them look like something they are not.

For example, in the restaurant, the walls were painted to appear to have deep cracks in the plaster. The wooden shutters were painted to look like weathered wood with deep cracks. The walls were also covered in faux ivy.

It was a temptation I could not resist. Everything in this image, with the exception of the plaster bitmap, was done in Xara.

Gary

Gary Priester

Moderator Person

Be It Even So Humble...

[gwpriester]

My wife and I dined at an Italian restaurant the other night which was covered inside and out with Trompe L'Oeil painting (French for to trick the eye). Trompe L'Oeil (also the name of the Xara Tutorials) refers to a technique of painting on walls, doors and other architectural surfaces to make them look like something they are not.

For example, in the restaurant, the walls were painted to appear to have deep cracks in the plaster. The wooden shutters were painted to look like weathered wood with deep cracks. The walls were also covered in faux ivy.

It was a temptation I could not resist. Everything in this image, with the exception of the plaster bitmap, was done in Xara.

Gary

Gary Priester

Moderator Person

Be It Even So Humble...

[glenngosack]

you've done it again... brought out the inferiority complex in me... now I have to try again... but don't stop... your images are great!

[whkguamusa]

well done, I think i have one something like it.

must go dig it up

Wayne K
Guam USA [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

[Egg Bramhill]

Did you use bevels to get the depth in the ivy "viens"?

Egg

[Soquili]

Hi Gary,

Very nice image. Would you show us how you created the Ivy leaves?

Soquili [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img]

[gwpriester]

The veins in the ivy are stoked lines, converted to shapes, filled with a light colored fractal cloud fill. A duplicate was made with a darker verison of the fractal fill was made and offset up and left (the emboss technique I used before the Bevel tool came into being :-)

The patterns on the leaves were created with three or more duplicate leaves with a linear fill for the leaf shape and then several fractal fills at varying sizes and colors with transparency applied.

Gary

Gary Priester

Moderator Person

Be It Even So Humble...

[gwpriester]

I was kind of hoping someone else out there would take a crack (as it were) at doing a trompe l'oeil illustration.

No takers?

Gary

Gary Priester

Moderator Person

Be It Rarely So Humble...

[RTK]

... it is beautiful...

One question to you Gary - how do you stop yourself from not doing too much? Meaning, you have all the skill in the world to create whatever you wish... but all of your compositions are just right - not too much, not too little. They always have just the right amount of detail in them.

The rusty looking bolts just made the whole illustration... for me.

Risto

[Ross Macintosh]

Gary - I've always been facinated by Trompe L'Oeil. I do have conceptual difficulty applying it it what I create in Xara. When for instance in earlier threads we created framed "pictures" on virtual walls, would that have been trompe l'oeil?

This thread has had my little brain stewing since you started it. At work I have a large bubblejet plotter (54" wide). I could conceivably do a design, print it out and laminate it to a wall for a trompe l'oeil effect. Choosing the appropriate subject matter is difficult since my home isn't an Italian restaurant [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img] I'm feeling like my brain is mush - such a great concept but I'm lacking it motivating ideas...

Regards, Ross

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