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From: brianj@witsend.cs.umd.edu (Brian Johnson)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics.visualization
Subject: Re: Pastel-like Painting on Mac
Message-ID: <BRIANJ.90Dec16205457@witsend.cs.umd.edu>
Date: 17 Dec 90 01:54:57 GMT
References: <1990Dec10.202314.14109@eagle.lerc.nasa.gov>
Sender: news@mimsy.umd.edu
Organization: University of Maryland Computer Science
Lines: 61
In-reply-to: hamid@lims01.lerc.nasa.gov's message of 10 Dec 90 20:23:14 GMT


In article <1990Dec10.202314.14109@eagle.lerc.nasa.gov> hamid@lims01.lerc.nasa.gov (HAMID SAMADANI) writes:


	   Question - I asked him about the pastel quality:  why did the 
		   images look as if they were painted with pastel pens 
		   and what if you wanted to achieve a different color quality?

		   His response was a rather flat, "I don't know.  They do
		   have a pastel quality to them and that's all I have to say
		   about it."

	   My guess is that the pastel quality is achieved because the strokes 
	   of color when applied to the image are opaque, that is a single 
	   brush of color hides what may be underneath, like a thick pastel 
	   pen stroke.  With watercolor or oil paints the translucent quality 
	   of the mixed color adds an additional element to the image. 

	   It may be possible to change this visual effect by painting the 
	   image at a greater level of detail: closer to the pixel, sorta like
	   Seurat's pointillism technique?

		   Hamid

The paint programs control the intensity of the colors, when video
tape mode is selected the most vibrant values are "washed out" so as
not to overload our crummy TV's I guess.  He can get pure, vibrant
colors (limited only by the monitor) if he wants.

The Torpedo Factory is in Alexandria, VA (Wash. D.C.) and the artists
name is Larry Ravitz.  I have his address and phone number if anyone
wants to know.

I've watched him work and it is very interesting.  He's intense and
has a burning desire to create significant art with the computer -
he's only had a computer for one year (Mac IIfx with Wacom tablet).

The Wacom tablet gives him x,y,z inputs.  What the z coordinate
enables (pressure on the tablet) is completely software dependent and
allows quite astonishing software creations.  This third input
parameter has only sixteen values but allows him to control brush
width (like a real brush), paint density (thickness sort-of), and /or
a couple of other things.

The high-end paint programs and extra degree of input freedom allow an
artist to CREATE (not simply photo-manipulate) wonderful things.  As
well as saving versions of a painting, animation, undo, immediate
paint "drying", etc...

This with only 16 z inputs and some supporting software.  What else
can we do?  These tablets are $400-900 (depending on size).  With
mass-production and a few years this capability could be very cheap.
I can imagine that many applications (especially visualization) could
use of a third input variable.  Lets push input parameters out one
step at a time.  This is an easy step:-)


--
Brian Johnson          Computer Science Department 
brianj@cs.umd.edu      University of Maryland  
(301) 405-2725         College Park, Md 20742