F-15 Jet image

[David O'Neil]

First, you have done a very good job!

The only reason I posted is to make you aware of two things that shout 'illustration' to an engineer's eyeballs.

The first item is that the refraction through the glass of the canopy would distort the image behind the canopy, and would also make it so the 'ground' shown in the glass of the canopy would not be the ground immediately behind the canopy.

(Recall that the image on two sides of a fishtank are not matched, and a fish may be fully visible to you in both of the panes of glass, even though the panes are at 90 degrees with respect to each other. - Same principle.)

To more fully simulate this, you might use a copy of the background, and apply a clipview of the entire canopy to that background, using an area below the canopy to align with the top edge of the canopy. Shrink it in the y dimension to skew it, and place it behind the canopy, but in front of the background. (Or apply a bitmap copy of the background to a shape the outline of the canopy, and recenter that background and resize it appropriately.)

I hope that made sense.

Other than that, and that fact that at those speeds, using standard photographic techniques, the 'clouds' would be fairly straight tubes from edge to edge of the picture, and not lumpy, due to their relative speed, it is an excellent illustration. Even as it is, it works very well, and you have every right to be proud of it.

David

[Kman]

This is a superb illustration. The only detail I see "off" is
the star signia on the side of the aircraft. Proportion-wise
it appears off -- the two triangles composing it seem to
be misaligned.

Great work. Thank you for sharing this.

Ken

[Intbel]

Re-reading this thread gave me food for thought:

Different folks see different things which, while not necessarily wrong, could have been done better.

I am wondering if what we notice are the aspects upon which we pay a lot of attention in our own work and if the things we didn't at first notice are things upon which we do not pay as much attention as we could in our own work?

'Tis worth thinking about when checking one's own work methinks.

[David O'Neil]

I am wondering if what we notice are the aspects upon which we pay a lot of attention in our own work and if the things we didn't at first notice are things upon which we do not pay as much attention as we could in our own work?

I believe the answer involves what *you* believe constitutes your art. There are probably as many types of art as there are artists.

He asked if this illustration looked like a photograph, which is one type of art. From my viewpoint, it cannot. But that is not to say that the illustration is not art--far from it. I feel that the illustration works far better in many ways than an illustration ever would. Ray conveys a certain impression with his drawing that a photograph could not convey. I would bet that 'that impression' is, in a way, Ray's idea of what art should be, and on that note he has succeeded.

In this day and age many people think art has to truly reflect the items in our world. This was not true in the old days, when they tried to represent God in their art. (You would not see God having acne in those drawings.) But art is art, and cannot so easily be defined, and both ages are correct in their own ways.

So, before I get wordy (oops--too late), create the art you are compelled to create. If you feel you must create photorealism, then study physics, and take special note of the world about you, and how objects look, and the physics behind them. If not, create the beautiful art that can be created in other ways. Above all, be true to yourself, and you cannot go wrong.

David (the wordy one today).

[Intbel]

Agreed.
I have never understood the need to create photo-realistic pics 'cos if that is what is wanted then use a photograph in the first place.

Editing pics for clarity or emphasis is a different matter.

Realistic illustration , yes.
In this respect realistic, for me, means believable.
But then, I appreciate much of Pablo Picasso's work.

No two folks perceive things in exactly the same way.
The accomplished artist is able to produce a piece of work which says "This is my interpretation/impression/perception of what I see."

In the aircraft drawing there is a mix of art and technical drawing.
The art can be whatever you want it to be but the tech. drawing needs to be accurate I think.
That said, even within the relatively cold, impersonal realm of tech. drawing there is room for personal expression.

Any art form, by its very nature is subjective - so purely objective analysis or judgement is, I feel, impossible.

[Logo Kid]

Too many hard lines - to make something totally photo realistic I've found you need to add a little blur / dirtyness / 'all around' shadow and also make everyhting interact with everything else ... the closer one shape gets to it's neighbour the better .... gadient fills are just not enough you need to use lots of overlay transparencies for each part.