When art takes over your brain
Oso3D
Posts: 15,085
in The Commons
One thing I've noticed about various forms of art is that they filter how you see the world. You start considering the world as your artform...
So this morning, I took this picture outside while walking my dog.
And my immediate thought was 'fuuuu*, it'd take a long time to render that fog effect...'
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LOL I know what you mean. Since I started with DAZ this summer I've started looking at the world in a different way. A couple of nights in August when walking to work it was really foggy and a street light cast these beautiful god rays through the branches of a tree in the fog. In too much hurry to stop and take a picture, but I wish I had.
I notice colors, in terms of color palettes.
"Ok, that leaf is green, but there's another leaf that has complementary reds."
Or seeing different shades of the same color. Even seeing dragons and greyhounds in clouds.
My problem is that I notice these fascinating scenes but never have my camera with me.
Yeah, yeah, I know... If I had a smart phone I'd have a camera too. Well, I don't! So there!
Generally as a rule I don't go out more than twice a week and would rather wait until the sun is high in the sky, but on Friday mornings I drive myself and one or two other people to a restaurant in the next town over, for breakfast. In the spring and fall the sun is just coming up, and the fog over the wetlands (i.e. swamp) sometimes makes for fascinating images. But no camera, no place to pull off and take a picture, and I'm driving. I guess I just get to talk about it.
In my younger days I'd hike out to the swamp and stand in the miserable wetness for a couple hours to try to get a good picture, but they never turn out as good as the ones I see when no camera is available.
My dog rather requires me to get outside in all sorts of stupid hours. (I miss having a backyard, man. At our house I could just open the back door. But it's better for me)
Nature is a bit messy. Photographers tend to minimize as much as possible the elements in a scene that can distract from the intended subject. Less is More being the general rule of thumb, even CG artists can learn from the old masters of photography. Composition and lighting have a greater impact on the appeal of an image than how many elements we can cram into a scene. While CG enthusiasts try to recreate manikins with extremely detailed pores, photographers and painters focus on the personality of their subjects. In the end, of course, it's all subjective in a sense, depending on the intended audience.
I count myself as lucky to have at one time developed my own black and white film and printed in my own darkroom. When the cost is more than simply time spent on a computer, one tends to be a bit more rigorous about the quality of images in which chemistry and paper get invested. Not saying that a picture has to be a masterpiece, but there's often some kind of sentimental attachment to the captured moment that goes beyond how "real" it looks.
I suppose that one could say the same thing about quality printing today. I have a friend with a nice Epson inkjet printer who uses it for archival quality prints from his Nikon setup. That ain't cheap! I suppose the real question I would ask is, "Would you spend the money to print the render? Would you spend the money to get that print framed properly?" Having put some of my own paintings in very nice frames, I must admit that no render I've ever made would be worth that kind of investment.
Once I get a new computer (hopefully), I hope to make larger, more art-worthy stuff and possibly get it nicely printed out from Deviantart's POD thing.
Of course, I'm not sure just where in the hell I'm going to PUT any of it in this small apartment. hrmph.
I notice the clouds more. Where I lived in NY before I got into Daz, we never had great cloud formations and most of the year was overcast and just dreary. What clouds you could see were obscured by hills. Now I live in FL down near the very bottom and near the coast and we get some amazing cloud formations. Another added benefit is that I'm now on flat land and you can see everything for miles!!!! I've learned to take my camera or phone everywhere because you never know whay you will see next. We also have some pretty amazing sunrises and sunsets here.
Chemical photography seems like ancient history now, but I started out developing my own contact prints in the late 50s when I was 12. My parent's camera used 620 film that produced (I think) 3.5x2.5 inch negatives. Black & white chemistry in 4x5 inch enameled metal trays in the family fruit cellar that also served as my darkroom. I bought bigger trays and made an enlarger from cardboard tubes and lenses bought through the Edmund Scientific Co. catalog. It made terrible enlargements! By the time I was 30 I was doing my own color developing and printing with some very nice equipment. However, I sold it all for a pittance at auction after digital took over. But I really enjoyed knowing how it was done. But I'd never go back. Fiddling with Photoshop is sooooooo much easier than changing color filters or tweaking color dials on a color enlarger head, then spend 30 minutes developing, drying, comparing, each iteration and then repeating until you get it right.
Hey, don't knock NY we have some great clouds... I will admit the day being a hour shorter due to mountains thing is a real problem. On the other hand I do think autumn in the northeast can't be beat.
Autumn is beautiful here in Ohio. I love this time of yr but without the rain
I just moved here to the Bay Area (Foster City, specifically), and am really enjoying that while we've 'moved to California,' a lot of the more temperate qualities I like are here -- there are still distinct seasons, there's cool weather, fog, mist, and so forth.
Just not the mountains of snow I hated growing up in the NE, or the long gloomy season of rain in the PNW.
I find myself looking at how light works in different everyday situations and how I could do it in Iray.
And I knew DS had taken over my brain when my wife bent over to look in the fridge yesterday and I tried to mentally turn down her Glutes Size parameter. I wonder how many of us wish we had parameter dials LOL.
I am strange, I love snow, having not experienced it too much where we used to live. Just 2 weeks after we moved up here it snowed and it changed the whole ambience of the area. It did confuse the dog though. He loved the snow, but was puzzled because he kept losing the snowballs we threw for him. When we lived down in SE England there wasn't enough snow to hide them.
But not so much when it's not. This if from a couple of years ago. The bottom floor of that house is hidden by the snow pile.
It's a tad blurry as I'm an even worse fotographer than I am renderer...
Oh, I really really really HATE snow!
Don't let your wife read over your shoulder lol! You may never get to play with Daz again!
When meeting new to people I notice things like the color and shape of their eyes from years of drawing. It also adds to your personal house hoards too. I've a closest full of stuff that I weas like HEY i can use that for -this art type- or hey that would make a GREAT- such and such-.
I once made a scultpure (for lack of a better word) of a Bonsai out of a broken car window and pieces of dead bark stripped from from a tree. Wit the shadow box that sucker weighed a good 30 lbs, It was the heaviest thing i ever made.
It definitely takes over and its in a good way.
..on nice days I'll look up and comment "that's a nice Bryce sky today".
I'm not knocking NY as a whole, just the small corner where I lived for 20 years. Our small village was in a weather pocket between two towns that sort of converged two separate weather patterns. One standing joke among the residents was that you might miss summer if you blinked. It either rained or snowed, but was very rarely sunny and the skies were dark and gloomy most days. We usually had one to two weeks the whole year where the temperatures were warm enough to go swimming and very rarely were they all in the same week or on the weekends when one could enjoy such weather. .That being said, I have rave about snow management in NY. They are marvels at getting the roads cleared quickly and I, rarely, was housebound with the exception of a few horrendous blizzards.
Sometimes when I see a nice outfit/clothes on TV (advert or program) I think, "that'd look great on a Daz3D figure" or "that'd look great on a certain figure" (thankfully, I don't think that all of the time :P ).
Greetings,
Just earlier today, I was talking to my wife (about something random w/r/t the kids, IIRC) and I noticed the wisps of hair at the top of her forehead where she'd pulled her hair back into a bun, and the thought momentarily crossed my mind, 'Oh, yeah, I know that hair set...it was used in a promo that I loved, so I picked it up...', and I nearly commented on it, before the more...'socially aware'...part of my brain shouted down the 'blurt-stuff-out' side of my brain. :)
The one which is really, really hard to control is the urge to compliment women on their cool looking ankle boots and slouch boots, because I love rendering those, and they look so nifty, and so few folks make them for the modern characters... One does NOT compliment a stranger on her boots, it turns out it's pretty creepy. (My wife tells me it's okay for me to do it, as long as I do it in my most outrageously flaming voice. I don't doubt her sincerity, and I have a very good voice of that type, but I think I'll avoid it entirely. ;) )
I do mentally and silently catalog how I would replicate particularly snazzy looking layered outfits, though...
-- Morgan
I notice reflections a lot more than I used to, and especially when I frist started back when using raytraced reflections made your renders take a day to complete instead of an hour. I remember riding along the Baltimore–Washington Parkway and marveling at the reflections in the chrome bumper on the car in front of us.. something I'd never paided any attention to before.
As for weather... I did my time in northern California - two seasons: raining all the damn time, and dead and brown. Hated it. Now I'm in upstate New York and I love it here. I did really like central Texas though, but that also has the 4 normal seasons.
I wouldn't find being complimented on clothing as creepy at all, especially by a guy with an obviously attached partner next to him. I try to go out of my way to compliment people, specifically cashiers - makes them happy and feel more like people than just meat machines to ring up your groceries. Some ladies spend untold hours or dollars on their hair and nails and they look fabulous, and you expect that from someone in a high powered office job but not from a lowly clerk.. so nice to let them know someone notices.
There was a lady working at a McD's we went to last week that had these awesome big chunky braids, as thick as you'd normaly see dreads, multi colors almost all the way down to her butt. She'd pulled the top layer through the top of her McD's visor and put an elastic around it, the rest hanging down undernieth. Was the coolest thing.. and says a lot about that particular location that they let her display so much of her personal style, some of those places are abnoxiously restrictive about how you keep your hair/nails/jewelry, they want everyone to look the same, and that's just boring to me.
I think as long as you don't compliment a woman's shirt while staring at her chest you're probably good. ;)
(Oh, and never compliment a woman on how she looks great without makeup, Odds are she is actually wearing some, and there's no way for that compliment to be resolved without awkwardness)
Back to the original topic, I haven't really noticed myself looking at the surrounding world differently, but thats probably something to do with the fact I was always the sort of person who would stand and stare at a tree for five minutes because I noticed it was being hit very prettily by the light. Or stand in the rain because it matched the music I was listening to (the thunder timed with the percussion it was awesome)
I try to compliment people on 'neat things' that stand out that aren't overtly sexual. It helps that I am fairly skilled at being congenial and friendly. If that's a skill.
(Making my wife laugh has saved me sooo many times)
The other day I complimented a woman on her tattoo. It was a cool multi-colored star thing behind her right ear, very nicely done. Shoes seem reasonably safe. ;)
And, yeah, not cleavage-staring helps.
I also am egalitarian about it. If a guy has nice shoes, I'll comment.
It was a more social setting, but neighbor had a friend over celebrating a birthday, and he really liked my Merrell's, so we chatted about shoes for a bit. They are kind of like slippers but... shoes. Slip on, easy peasy. As an adult I have a rebellious 'well, f* tying shoes, I'm buying slip ons' where possible.
I really don't like wearing shoes so almost all of mine are slip-ons so I can get them off as quickly as possible.
Greetings,
<way off topic>I usually notice shoes in an elevator at work, or something like that, when I'm trying not to look at people. Not so good with the social graces, this one. :-/
As for slip-ons, the best shoes I've ever had were my Puma Mostro Perf sneakers in black. Velcro straps for super-easy slip on/off, stretchy enough that I didn't even need to strap/unstrap them most of the time, and dressy enough to be worn to interviews. Unfortunately they have nearly zero padding, and my feet are no longer able to survive that, even with add-ins. I found myself in serious agony at the end of the day, knee trouble, everything. Bought a pair of Nikes with a huge sole, lots of soft padding, and most of the problems have evaporated... :( Still, I love the Mostro Perf's, and highly recommend them.</way off topic>
The truth is that everything changes how we view the world; it took around a decade after my TV classes (and my mom working electronics in a college TV studio) before I could really enjoy a live TV show without thinking about what the technical director was doing behind the scenes, and how the show was being blocked and such.
I'm fascinated when I fly by how well the channels in mountains simulate fractals, or vice versa... :)
It's really nice having my boys (5 and 7), because there's absolutely nothing that can simulate the way they look, their behavior, and completely chaotic reactions, so I don't get that slight feeling of unreality with them, ever. :)
I was at the office the other day, and the President was coming into town, apparently staying a block or two from my office. There were police cars at the intersections, blue and red lights spinning, barricades up, streets past them bare, and I started cataloging what I'd need to create that scene in DAZ... Few people, so it would be low on system resources...the police outfit, the police car (a texture and add-on set for another car, IIRC), the barricades, Stonemason's Urban 2 set, a few scraggly street-trees, some grime brushes... I wanted to take a picture with my phone, so I could block it out on my computer, but again, that part of my brain that goes, 'WTF are you THINKING?' stopped me, probably preventing a side-tackle from a nice police officer. :)
-- Morgan
you are right, I think one who is doing art (painting or rendering) sees the world much more intense or let me say with a closer look to things, you take a more carefull look how shadows looks and such things, how skyies look (colors and stuff) and so on