Detailed Image of Cell

Here's a detailed image of a human cell, created by Evan Ingersoll & Gael McGill.

It's not really a "photo," but it's not exactly "art" either. The accurate 3D model was made using data sets from X-ray, cryoelectron microscopy, and nuclear magnetic resonance. 

Parts of the cell include: nucleus (blue stranded area at bottom), mitochondria (purple football), actin filaments (green pipe cleaners), microtubules (gray pipes), endoplasmic reticulum (confetti blob)

Tools used include: "Digizyme’s Molecular Maya custom software, Autodesk Maya, and Foundry Modo used to import, model, rig, populate, and render all structural datasets."

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Via Reddit and ArtStation

Why Dogs Don't Like TV

Dog vision is different from human vision in several ways. They can't distinguish red and green.

And they don't have sharp focus in a central area of the retina. Instead of concentrating photoreceptors in the fovea centralis, which gives us humans very detailed and color-sensitive vision in the pinpoint center of our attention, they have a broader area of focus.

Dog vision may not be as sharp or as colorful as ours, but it's better at tracking fast-moving objects, because their eyes are optimized to respond quickly. 

Our photoreceptors have to recharge at a rate of about 60 times per second. This "flicker fusion" threshold is the recharge rate that allows us to perceive a steady image on a flickering source like a TV screen.

Watching video that refreshes at 30 or 25 frames per second will pass for stable reality for us—but not for a dog. As dog expert Alexandra Horowitz says, "Dogs have a higher flicker-fusion rate than humans do: seventy or even eighty cycles per second. This provides an indication why dogs have not taken up a particular foible of persons: our constant gawking at the television screen," which is not fast enough for dog vision. "They see the individual frames and the dark space between them too, as though stroboscopically. This—and the lack of concurrent odors wafting out of the television to engage them. It doesn't look real."

Their fast flicker-fusion rate and reaction time also explains why dogs are so good at catching flying frisbees or tossed chunks of cheese.

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From the book: Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know by Alexandra Horowitz

Segrelles Exhibition Extended

José Segrelles was a Valencian painter and illustrator who lived from 1885-1969. 

There's an exhibition "José Segrelles, Master of Fantasy," currently on view at the Maricel Museum in Sitges (Barcelona). It was curated by his grand-nephew José Enrique Segrelles Cortina.

 

The artist Segrelles said: "Reality does not appeal to me. It overwhelms me, it weighs me down. I prefer mystical, mythological figures, unreal beings from the oriental fantasy. I am filled with pride to be called an artist, not for what I paint, but for what I feel."

Segrelles also did travel posters and sports images, which were dynamic and imaginative. "When there are no models for whatever I’ve dreamed, I create them specifically for this purpose. I do it with plasticine. I create a stage, but as what I see is not what I saw, I have to paint with the imagination."

Because of the success of the show, the closing date will be extended to January 31, 2021.

Learn more:

José Segrelles, Mestre de la Fantasia, through 31 January 2021 at the Maricel Museum in Sitges (Barcelona)

Books

José Segrelles Albert: His life and his work (Spanish Edition) 

Segrelles: José Gabriel Segrelles Albert, 1885-1969 : biography (Spanish Edition)

What happens when you shine blue light on an orange object?

Petr Macháně asks:
"What happens if there is orange object [seen in] blue light? What color should I paint part of the object that's in the light? Blue and orange are opposites on color wheel. I am just looking for advice on how to think about this."

Petr, the color you need to mix is the apparent color you see. The word "apparent" is important here, because a given color must be seen in context. Those context cues tell you what color of light seems to be shining in the scene. If the light is white, the color you see will match the color of the object, but in colored light, everything changes.

In the diagram above, for example, we see see a checkerboard with a multicolored bar hovering over it. In the left sub-rectangle, it appears to be lit by yellow light because our visual system is tricked by the yellow shift of all the colors inside the rectangle. On the right we believe it's lit by blue light. The actual color note of the intersection piece is the same on both sides: It's a neutral gray.

So the color you paint is the color of the light plus the local color of the object. Sometimes this results in a color canceled out to neutral gray. But this effect can enhance a color, too. If you put green light on a green surface the result will be even brighter green. You see this in folds of flesh, where the reflected light shines back into a fold of skin and makes it a brighter orange." 

"To answer your question, if you put an orange object in blue light, the color you mix may be a rather dull gray, but if you do it right, it will look orange. Try it and see if it works for you."

Previously: Color Constancy

Questions from Nicholas

Nicholas, an art student, asks:
"You spend a lot of time doing demos and tutorials on your blog and other platforms such as Instagram and YouTube. I greatly admire how you are willing to give away so many techniques for free. What made you decide to share all this information with the world rather than teaching at a university?"

Around 2007 I started sharing online by downloading info about painting onto this blog. I was recording those art thoughts down in notebooks and on cassette tapes before the Internet happened, and I realized I could do a digital version of it that other artists could discover. The comments and questions stimulated further thought. 

When I was an art student, this stuff was like secret knowledge because they weren't teaching it in the art schools. You had to dig in old, obscure books and libraries to find it. To an extent I still feel that a lot of the information we're talking about on the blog and other socials is not generally taught. 

I lectured at about 40 different art schools between 2007 and 2013. It was exciting to meet kindred spirits among art teachers and students during those visits. It was also interesting to see how art training in many places has really gotten better. However, I didn't want to teach in a university setting, because getting a particular curriculum approved in an actual art department is a very political process with a lot of battles that I wouldn't want to waste my time fighting. Before the pandemic, students had a lot of good choices in real art schools. Now I don't know what the options are for prospective students. You tell me! 

Once I figured out how to produce video for YouTube and Instagram, I realized that there was a real opportunity. The tools and methods are easily accessible. I could share the experience of painting as the adventure that it really is. Most of my content is free, but I enjoy producing the in-depth videos for Gumroad downloads. 

Lately I'm focusing on filming not only the demos but also the theory behind them and practical exercises that learners can actually do and then share with each other in online communities. I'm grateful to my followers for supporting my work and learning along with me.  

One of my private sketchbooks -- mostly unpublished -- is called "Art by Committee."

When I was painting paperback covers for fantasy novels in the 1980s, there were stacks of paper manuscripts cluttering up my studio. I would snip out an excerpt from a random manuscript, tape it into my big sketchbook and bring it to a cheap restaurant where my art buddies and I would sit around and use those prompts as sketching inspiration.

Nicholas continues: 

"The biggest lesson I have learned studying illustration is the importance of drawing everything around us, all the time. I try to draw in my free time as much as I can, but I know that for myself and many of my peers it can be difficult to juggle school projects with personal projects. How do you manage to not get burned out with all the work that you do?"

Sounds like there are two issues here: time management and motivation. You can structure your time by carving your day into chunks and making room for your own projects. I built an animation stand in my apartment in art school, and when I was in university before that, I made cast latex masks in my spare time.

Ideally you should be able to weave your personal projects and school assignments together. When your teacher gives you an assignment that you're not too thrilled about, talk to them and see if you can bend the terms of the assignment to include challenges that you wanted to do for yourself.  

Being burned out has never been an issue for me. I always had my own sketchbook going when I was in art school or when I was working in an animation studio, and I've always been happiest when I've been doing art. I think the best thing about my art school days was that I was always in the company of other art students my age who liked to goof off by drawing crazy cartoons and painting. 

I recommend hanging around all kinds of artists, both imaginative artists like animators and cartoonists, and observational artists, like atelier people, plein air painters, and urban sketchers. Be sure to have sketchbooks that are crazy and unhinged and politically incorrect, where you don't have to worry about how people will react to what you do. 

The blessing of our current era is that any artist or writer can publish for free and develop an audience with no filter. But the curse is that we must do our creative work with the awareness of an unseen and unseeable audience watching over our shoulders all the time and judging everything we do. 

Take me to Dinotopia

Image from Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time

My bags are packed. Are you coming too? 

Eight-Gray Test

Grays are anything but dull and neutral. They’re the subtle chef’s sauce, the unifying ingredient, of any color scheme. And there are many ways to make them.


Here's what I used for this array of eight swatches:

 
Top row
TB: Transparent black made from Ivory black tinted with water to a middle gray
T3: Transparent blend of Cadmium Yellow Light, Quinacridone Rose, and Phthalo Blue.
T3A: Transparent blend of Cadmium Yellow Light, Pyrrole Red, and Ultramarine Blue.
LT: Three layers of transparent color: Cadmium Yellow light, Quinacridone Rose, and Phthalo Blue. Be sure to let each layer dry before adding the next one.

Bottom row
OB: Opaque black tint, from ivory black tinted with titanium white and warmed with a little yellow and red.
O3: Opaque gray made from a blend Cadmium Yellow Light, Quinacridone Rose, and Phthalo Blue, lightened with Titanium White rather than being thinned with water.
O3A: Opaque gray made from a blend of Cadmium Yellow Light, Pyrrole Red, and Ultramarine Blue, lightened with Titanium White rather than being thinned with water.
LTA: Three separate layers of Cadmium Yellow Light, Pyrrole Red, and Ultramarine Blue. Note how the gray is more active than the others, with colors vibrating.

Try it Yourself

Make a middle-value gray swatch with black tinted with water. The goal is to match that particular note with seven other grays made with different ingredients. 

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Share your results with the free Facebook Group Color in Practice.
Learn more in my Gumroad tutorial TRIADS: Painting with Three Colors.

Siggraph's 2020 Demos

Siggraph is a conference of computer graphics research, now held virtually. Their Asia subchapter has just shared some of the new technical papers demonstrating new techniques for digital animation and graphics. (Link to YouTube) 

Here's another recent video (Link to YouTube) with highlights of their main conference. There continues to be remarkable progress in surface flow dynamics, secondary actions on deformable objects, and artistic style transfer to video source animation. 

These brief demos serve as a preview of digital tools and techniques that will filter down to individual artists, commercial cameras, and visual effects in movies. As a traditional painter, I'm fascinated to learn how these scientists analyze and reproduce familiar phenomena of the visual world 

Politics in an Oyster House

Here's a character study by Richard Caton Woodville (1825-1855).

Politics in an Oyster House (1848) by Richard Caton Woodville

According to American Antiquarian:

"Two men sit across the table from each other in an oyster house, an establishment used commonly as a meeting spot and watering hole. The younger man, dressed all in black and wearing his top hat indoors, is leaning across the table toward his middle-aged companion, arguing some political point. He tightly clutches a newspaper, suggesting that something he has read has instigated the argument. The older man looks out at the viewer, rather than at his young, fiery companion, with a slightly bemused look, perhaps implying that the situation is a familiar one and that he has heard—and probably disagreed with—all of the younger man’s points before. Though we have no way of knowing what the argument is about, the image captures a scenario typical at the time, in which a political argument, instigated or fueled by the latest news, takes place in a public meeting space."

The painting became a popular print and was well received by critics of the day. Woodville only produced about 20 paintings. He died at age 30 from an overdose of morphine. 

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Richard Caton Woodville

Can you take casein on an airplane?

Paul asks: "Have you ever taken the plane with casein? Is it possible to travel with it (either checked in or in carry-on)?"

Paul, there's no problem packing the tubes of casein in your checked luggage. If you want to take them as carry-on, it's also OK because the tubes are smaller than the 3.4 ounce maximum limit. The average Richeson tube is 1.25oz. But be careful because the big tubes of white are 5 oz. or 150ml. 

The good thing about casein for a remote painting adventure is that you don't need to worry about bringing mineral spirits or oil solvent, which you can't take on an airplane, checked or otherwise.

However I would not recommend casein for actually painting in airports, or other enclosed spaces. That's because it has a rather strong smell that not everyone loves. Another thing to keep in mind is that if you paint with it, you'll need to clean up fairly quickly after finishing the painting. If it dries on your brush, the dried paint can wreck the fibers. That's not such a problem with gouache because you can reactivate paint that has dried on your brush.