Shay <sah### [at] simcopartscom> wrote in message news:3f941642@news.povray.org...
> Photo-realism isn't what I meant. I was speaking about the noticeable
> and of course accurate perspective in cg drawings and photographs. When
> I'm driving, the road ahead of me looks flat, but in a photo or CG
> render, the road, earth, ocean, bottom of a building, whatever appears
> to rise up to meet the sky.

Ah, but, as you note, that is true in photos as well as CG, so I don't know
if its 'expected' so much as 'assumed'. And it can go too far, such as in
the looming building effect at low camera angles.

> Once I pick up a pencil, however, I am lost. I can't
> sketch even the simplest thing. Sometimes it feels like I can really see
> something on the paper, but even then, I can't even draw a close
> approximation. When I see the planning sketches of some CG artists, I
> think "Damn, if I could draw like that, I wouldn't even bother with CG."

Heh heh, I'm actually pretty good with a pencil, but I mainly just doodle.
When I was a kid everyone thought I would be an artist because I drew
constantly.  But I could never draw things with the kind of detail I wanted,
so switched my creative outlets and ended up becoming a musician instead.
Now I can no longer go out physically and play music, so I've started
getting back more into visual arts, and I find that CG let me now do what I
couldn't do as a kid.  In fact now I complain about too much detail, and
over-emphasis on photorealism...:-o

> Problem is, the presentation might have been "borrowed" in the first
> place. I didn't know about this guy until a week ago, so hopefully Jim
> will drop in here with a little history if I'm wrong, but it appears
> that the look which we associate with surrealism was stolen from:
> http://www.mcs.csuhayward.edu/~malek/Chirico.html .

I saw some of his stuff when I was researching the round, but didn't realize
he predated most of the surrealist group. Interesting.

> I really think that the challenge is to walk away from (Dali/Magritte
> type) surrealism completely. Some things are magnificent, but only hold
> enough potential for one or a few artists.

Definitely.  My entry wasn't about trying to do a Dali or Magritte, it was
about trying to figure out where they were coming from... what surrealism
was in its infancy. That was what made it interesting for me, instead of
trying to create an image, I was trying to re-create a philosophy and
waiting to see what image came out of it.

> | I'd like to try this experiment with several artists all contributing
> | objects (and no one can see the other objects until a specified number
> | have been produced), then each artist uses the same random set of
> | selections to brainstorm. I'd be curious to see what each produced.
>
> A simpler way would be to put in a very general word like 'opening',
> 'tomorrow', 'similar', or 'way' into a search engine and to then take
> the 50th page from the search and extract all of the concrete nouns.

Well, the results might be the same, but what I meant is probably more
psychological than artistic,  I was curious as to the different mental
connections several different artists would come up with from the same set
of objects. Kind of a Rorshach modeling test ;-)

> Another experiment would then be to take your objects and create
> something which is as far away from surreal as possible. Just take every
> characteristic which you associate with the look of the pictures you
> expect to create with the method and reverse each.

Hmmm, interesting.  Using a surrealist methodology to try and produce a
non-surreal work... but then, since all the objects have to be created
beforehand, one could 'stack the deck' with anti-surreal objects...

> This is what I meant when I characterized Jim's image as "antagonistic."
> It is a picture of Miro, but appears to me to be very anti-Miro.

Yes, but Miro as you see him, while there is Miro as Jim sees him, or Miro
as Miro saw himself?  (And I didn't see Miro with any expectations at all, s
o I thought it was just great!)

> Here is a link to another of his sources (though perhaps not
> specifically this painting):
> http://www.moma.org/momalearning/images/pop_ups/miro_small.jpg

Ah, similar and yet utterly dissimilar... still works for me.

Well, thanks for all the commentary Jim & Shay, I've found this quite
interesting.  Maybe if I get time I'll try your experiment & post it in
p.b.images.

RG

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