January 2015 Video Tutorial -- Tracing Is Not Cheating!

[csehz]

Maya, Egg they are beautiful and well especially that glass jar..

[Rik]

Egg: That's a couple of great creations. The Glass jars look excellent, and I love the decorations on your watering cans.
Maya: To say that your drawing looks accurate, is a bit of an understatement! wonderful work.

[angelize]

Some very nice work here.

Maya: that is wonderful.
Egg: Those painted cans a really nice
Stygg: yours looks nice too.

Here is mine the first one Is the can just as is and the second one I distressed the watering can it's got worn paint, a bit of rust, a couple of dents and a smudge of dirt. It's now a vintage shabby chic piece that collectors will pay big bucks for!

[stygg2003]

Thanks for the compliment Francis but I've not posted trace image yet, I will attempt the trace as soon as my guests return home to Greece. Perhaps I should trace a Greek urn I like your images Francis, especially the distressed one.

Stygg

[Egg Bramhill]

Hi, I like all of these but I think doing the reflection requires more work. In Gary's tutorial he uses a lot of blur & then high levels of transparency which gives a decent type reflection, but if this isn't done as drastically you can see the "arced" floral pattern in the refection which is arcing in the wrong direction, it should arc in the same direction as the reflected object. Just pointing this out

[Gare]

Let me riff on Egg's point for a moment; I have other comments even though we're only two days into this tutorial!

First, reflections are continuous with the plane up which the object is resting. Actually a good example is if something is floating 6" above a plane. Standing at a superior view, you cannot see the botrtom of the object, but you CAN see its bottom in the reflection.


(From the immortal classic Xara Xtreme 5: The Official Guide)

Look carefully at what is easily mirrored, and those areas that require tracing and/or a completely different reference for the perspective when you get around to tracing the reflection area.

As for blurring, in this example, yes, egg, that was a cheat. It enabled me to dismiss the accuracy of the text, and accuracy of the other areas. This is only acceptable if the oblect is reather dead-on with relationship to the camera, and little or no arcing is going on, as if you're looking down at the object.A good general rule is if, say, you're drawing a cylinder, and you can see that the top lip is an oval, you have too much perspective to easily draw the reflection and should lower your view (or camera).

What I have to say about blurry reflections I'd also say about blurry shadows: they both happen in life, but you should not overuse the effect. It got tiresome real fast in Windows 7 where the Aero interface blurred and darkened everything behind it, suggesting but not accurately capturing the effect of glass. It looked more like sandblasted glass!



The above is an example highlight text. Imagine it's that floral pattern n the watering can. As you can see, from the perspective, the reflection is a lot less arced and that's because thew camera angle is almost on the table, but when you look at an object on a highly reflective surface, the reflection and all its details are along a continuous plane. From the side, the can and it's reflection look like the drawing at the right, and not the left.



Make sense, at least optically?

Truthfully, I'm a little bushed today, after providing the video, plus the written tutorial, all in the span of a week's work. But I want to keep this discussion and the best wat to get the profile, the perspective and the fill of photographic objects looking as good as the original by tracing and drawing in Xara.

My Best,






'

[Crow Haven]

Thanks Csehz, Rik, and Francis. Francis, great distressed look on the watering can!

Good reflections info, Gare!