Shay wrote:
  What other
> rounds have you entered?
> 
I guess 10 overall

They are shown on this page:

http://www21.brinkster.com/jrcsurvey/digital/irtcmenu.html

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"Jim Charter" <jrc### [at] aolcom> wrote in message
news:3e9da17a@news.povray.org...

Since you were so generous in taking the time to share your impression
of my picture, I will share my impression of some of yours.

_____Carson:
There is a real challenge when deciding how to portray an emotional
person in CG. The distinct divisions between objects makes CG more
literal than paint, and for most, even the best CG approximation is much
less literal than a photograph. This leaves a cg artist looking for a
way to show human emotion in some fashion between realism and cubism.
The face and pose of your character do portray emotion, but I think that
the effect could be increased by moving just a bit more towards
abstraction. This, of course, would sacrifice some of the identity of
your subject. Tough call.


_____Oranges:
My favorite of the group by far. The way in which the objects are placed
tells me that they are not in their usual positions. The objects are all
Asian, but the obvious effort behind their being assembled shows that
the owner of the objects is not. The impression I get here is of a woman
's invitation to a man for a romantic Asian dinner, the peeled orange
suggesting an only partially veiled sexual invitation. The tone and
again the obvious care behind the placing of the objects shows that the
man receiving the invitation will see an Asian dinner as exotic. A pot
roast would not be displayed this way.

The only thing distracting me (OK, bothering the Hell out of me) in this
picture is the cup's being partially out of frame. This element is too
natural for such an unnatural "composition."


_____Nocturne:
A very interesting perspective for a scene type picture, and it does
have mood. Personally, I would decrease the size of the opening, but
that's just me. There is a root right at the corner of the (pier?) which
is vertical enough and close enough to the corner to give the panel of
light to the left of the corner a window like appearance, which
contributes to the rest of the roots appearing somewhat like window
cracks. I find this to be a little distracting, but perhaps you are
pleased with that affect.


_____Shorebirds:
This very chaotic image would be better without the sea behind it. The
familiarity of the scene (birds over the ocean) distracts too much from
the effect that you wanted to achieve with this picture. Personally, I
would just place some type of strong pattern (perhaps even just a white
panel) behind the birds and allow the birds to act as an obfuscation of
that pattern.


_____St. Mark's Place:
The closest building on the left is very nice. I think that an
orthographic camera in front of that building with all of the staircases
and details would produce an excellent picture. Interestingly, there
were no abstract entries in the 'The City' round. Almost every entry
included some landmark or distinctive architectural style that revealed
the scene as "a city." In my opinion, the inner structure and activity
of an office building or skyscraper would be less specific and a better
representation of "the city." Of course, almost every IRTC topic is like
that.

 -Shay

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Shay wrote:
> 
> In the one round I entered, I made the commitment to comment on every
> entry.


That would turn my brain to pudding.

It was very difficult for the same reason that I have not
> commented on most of the threads in this group. I'm simply not
> qualified. 

You mean, I am guessing, that you are not technically qualified enough 
to make technical comments. I also have the same feeling but we differ 
then because I feel that content decisions are also important and can 
involve a lot of meaning, passion, expression, etc.  Still, I will allow 
that technical concerns are the major preoccupation at this stage in the 
development of the medium and that they underlie the effectiveness of 
the image whatever its intended content.

Anyway, I think that being able to introspect while letting an image 
affect you and then putting it into words is all the qualification
that is needed.  If all you find you are thinking about when you see an 
image is its technical shortcomings then so be it.  I think the comments 
I have seen you make so far are very accurate.

>
> 
> Your comments were actually really appreciated. 

Relieved to hear it.

> I'm tempted to send in my next
> entry without a topic description. Partly because I'm not sure I can
> communicate what I'm trying to do in a few paragraphs, if at all. I'm
> curious what type of reactions I would get as well. I'll likely submit
> one however, even though I believe that a picture should be complete
> without a description, because each entry is viewed for only a few
> seconds, and a topic description can help to accelerate comprehension.

It can definitely affect the scoring of a picture, I believe.  I have 
found that it influences me quite profoundly, along with knowledge of 
the artist's reputation.  I have personally, therefore, adopted the 
practice of using Winvote's fullscreen feature to go through all the 
images and score them without knowing who the artist is or what the 
description says.  Later I go through and read the textfiles and make 
some adjustments if I think it is really warrented.

  "I just wanted to see more height
> fields and less people trying to be creative."<g>
> 

LOL, that's precious.

I remember once, some discussion came up on these newsgroups after the 
"Worship" round.  One woman commented that my entry, "Chalice" could not 
have been the holy grail because it was, too paraphrase, "too fancy".

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Shay wrote:

> 
> _____Oranges:
> My favorite of the group by far. The way in which the objects are placed
> tells me that they are not in their usual positions. The objects are all
> Asian, but the obvious effort behind their being assembled shows that
> the owner of the objects is not. The impression I get here is of a woman
> 's invitation to a man for a romantic Asian dinner, the peeled orange
> suggesting an only partially veiled sexual invitation. The tone and
> again the obvious care behind the placing of the objects shows that the
> man receiving the invitation will see an Asian dinner as exotic. A pot
> roast would not be displayed this way.
> 
> The only thing distracting me (OK, bothering the Hell out of me) in this
> picture is the cup's being partially out of frame. This element is too
> natural for such an unnatural "composition."
> 
> 

You have been very generous!  Your reactions to "Oranges" is intriquing 
on a couple of counts.  The image was originally inspired by a line from 
the Leonard Cohen song "Suzanne".  Cohen was talking about a type of tea 
with dried orange skins in it but I always pictured a simple repast of 
tea and peeled oranges offered, in the song, to male visitors.  The song 
is of course intensely erotic with its hints of virgin love.  Secondly, 
I have probably painted five hundred still lifes of varioius domestic 
scenes and objects, many of table settings, many of shoes, and I could 
probably count on my fingers the number of them that have objects 
cutting the edge of the picture frame.  So I'm not sure why I did that. 
  The picture was supposed to feature a peeled orange which I'd modelled 
with a macro using multiple blobs placed along splines.  But I had to 
exclude it because the final render was taking too long.  Its presence 
might have caused me to run the cup off the edge.  Not sure anymore, but 
as it stands now, I have to agree, it weakens the effect of the composition.
Maybe I just never resolved whether I wanted it to look casual or arranged.
May also have to do with the fact that I wasn't working from a 
prearranged model.

Thanks again for taking the time.

-Jim

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"Jim Charter" <jrc### [at] aolcom> wrote in message
news:3e9df0a2@news.povray.org...

| Jim Charter:
|  Your reactions to "Oranges" is intriquing on a couple of counts.
|  The image was originally inspired by a line from the Leonard
|  Cohen song "Suzanne".

I've never heard of Leonard Cohen, but I was curious enough to look up
the lyrics to the song. I didn't have to fish around to find these
comparisons. All of these lyrics are from the first few lines of the
song (the part dealing with the tea and oranges).

Song: Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river
Picture: The impression I get here is of a woman's invitation to a man

Song: And she feeds you tea and oranges
Picture: invitation to a man for a romantic Asian dinner

Song: You can spend the night beside her
Picture: the peeled orange suggesting an only partially veiled sexual
invitation.

Song: tea and oranges That come all the way from China
Picture: the man receiving the invitation will see an Asian dinner as
exotic
Picture: the obvious effort behind [the objects] being assembled shows
that the
owner of the objects is not (Asian).

'Intriguing' doesn't come close to covering it. The volume, and more
importantly, accuracy of information contained in this simple depiction
of tea and oranges is somewhat more than intriguing.

 -Shay

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"Jim Charter" <jrc### [at] aolcom> wrote in message
news:3e9dcccc@news.povray.org...

| Jim Charter:
|  You mean, I am guessing, that you are not technically qualified
|  enough to make technical comments.

Depends on the methods which the person is using. I know a lot about a
few things. 'Scene' lighting is not one of them.

| Jim Charter:
|  we differ then because I feel that content decisions are also
|  important and can involve a lot of meaning, passion, expression,
|  etc.

We don't disagree on this at all. My point is that this requires a
degree of qualification as well. Slashdolt mentioned in another thread
that he saw a famous painting of a red square and was completely unable
to judge whether or not it was a good or horrible painting of a red
square. A waterwheel picture is one of my "red square" areas. Aside from
basic ideas about composition and color, I have no idea whether a water
wheel picture is complete crap or a f__king masterpiece. I have a Monet
calendar which was given to me as a gift hanging in my office. Without
looking, I couldn't even guess what the picture for April is. I couldn't
remember the picture from March to save my life. I am blind to this type
of picture.

I have an aquarium. 125 gallons, three fish, all identical, no
decoration of any kind. I am minimalist by my nature. Being raised
around carpenters has also given me an affection for order,
craftsmanship, and complexity (not variety). *These* are the qualities
which I am best able to appreciate and objectively judge. Everything
else is foreign.

 -Shay

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"Slashdolt" <jer### [at] questsoftwarecom> wrote in message
news:3e9d9b20$1@news.povray.org...
 I
> remember seeing a famous painting called "Red Square" (I don't know the
> artist), and to me, it was simply that: a red square.  Does that mean that
> it was without artistic merit?  No.  But it was lost on me.
>

Malevich was the artist.  If anyone would like to explain this, I'd be more
than happy to listen.  Seriously.  Maybe I'm missing something quite
profound.  Maybe a JPEG doesn't cut it...

http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/malevich/sup/malevich.peasant-woman.jpg

Sorry if I'm getting too far off-topic...

--
Slash

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http://www.observer.com/pages/story.asp?ID=2765

Just sending you a link is kind of a cop out but it is necessary to 
understand what Malevich thought he was doing.  Understanding why it was 
to become so valued by a succession of "modernist" artists is still a 
fairly open discussion.  Depending on what it is that one likes about 
modern, especially abstract, art a  viewer can probably find it or its 
precursor in Malevich's work.  But locating meaning incontravertably 
with the subjective life of the viewer would be one of the biggies.

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Thanks!  That actually does put the painting into context.  Whether or not
it truly has meaning beyond any ideas that Malevich might have had is still
questionable in my mind, but I'll keep an open mind.  In the meantime, I
suppose I'll just continue with my Socialist Realism... ;-)

--
Slash

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You could look into the following artists that come most readily to mind:

Robert Ryman  <-- has spent his entire career painting only with white paint

Yves Klien   <--- painted a whole series of paintings with a special 
blue he named after himself

Agnes Martin   <---- so called grid paintings

This essay is fairly typical of how art history is presented.  Malevich 
is not specifically mentioned but Mondrian is close enough.
http://witcombe.sbc.edu/modernism/

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