non-linear perspective questions

Can you imagine how it might have felt to think about recording, narrating or depicting places of importance or sentimentality before there were railroad tracks or engineered walls? It's tempting to think what cave paintings might tell. Despite there being nothing linear in this photo, it still has depth cues. Could one formalistically seek depth cues in ancient images? Let's not go there today.

depth cues

Seen flat, it might be a painting from the 1950s. When given a minimal depth cue, it might be sculpture from the late 1970s. Or a cookie sheet.

when it rains, it pours

The current batch of perspectivists at UC Extension recently reverse-engineered some photos. Reverse engineering is the process of analyzing a subject system to create representations of the system at a higher level of abstraction. A photograph is a representation of the system of perspective construction. The camera uses a station point, line of sight and picture plane; it has a field of view and focuses along a line of sight. These geometric abstractions are common to both perspective and still photography. Our perspectivists located abstract components in the photographs and roughly sketched out plan versions of the scene the camera most likely faced.
Google SketchUp simulates the same kind of reverse engineering on photos to get them to merge their represented reality into the virtual reality of SketchUp. The programmers then had to find a way to make visible the abstract components WITHIN its 3D modeling software, since the software itself, being no more like sight than photography, is a representation of the system of perspective drawing. Looks a lot like the perspectivists' work!The whole process reminds me of staring at the rainy-day illustration on the Morton Salt container. A girl was holding an umbrella and a container of Morton Salt, which had the same illustration with a smaller girl, smaller container, with yet another illustration of a girl with an umbrella and an illustrated container. Or so I imagined.

enduring British influence

Still seeing Turner everywhere. Even with Ray Charles singing America the Beautiful.

fresh, green, organic, unprocessed

Those were some of the keywords of a look-and-feel assignment for a retail food service client. The job was not to redesign the store (in-house designers would do that) but to create a visual from those keywords in an overall impression of the store. Vague direction, vague pictures. Fresh blood for the design crew. Happy job.

more on fog

How pleasant and mysterious it is to pull a perspective drawing out of charcoal-rubbed fog. For some reason, I had the presence of mind to document a few steps in this concept sketch for a Liz Claiborne retail interior. My favorite is the first one. Shoulda stopped there, although I like how the light firmed up in the third.

wetmosphere

2009 LHS webcam vs. 1845 Turner sunrise

Another blog hiatus over. In the morning I check the view from the East Bay hills to see how many layers to wear on a hike to the top. That great occupant of space so conveniently overlooked in linear perspective constructions, the atmosphere, had intervened between the distant ocean horizon and my avatar, the LHS webcam. A wee smudge of form whispered, "Turner, Turner, Turner." Was this another case of vaguely familiar geometry? A quick online search turned up J.M.W. Turner's 1845 Sunrise with Sea Monsters. Eerie.