Vermeer and optics

[zahc]

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2013/11/vermeer-secret-tool-mirrors-lenses

The article is about an optical apparatus that takes painting photorealistic paintings a mechanical exercise equivalent to photography with paint. Specifically they focus on Vermeer but there are many more photorealistic paintings that probably used similar techniques. I'm not even sure Vermeer is the best example.

I don't have the slightest problem believing that painters in all ages used every means available to get a competitive advantage. Painting was a trade, and trade secrets were probably easier to keep in a pre-internet, pre-telegraph world.

[230RN]

I can't draw worth a darn, but while I was in "chemical"  photography, I found I could take a negative, project it through the enlarger onto a sheet of regular typing paper in the enlarger easel, then just fill in the lighter parts with pencil until the whole sheet looked pretty uniformly gray.

It was really spooky the first time I tried this and turned off the enlarger and bam, there was a hand-drawn picture!

People who saw these pictures of mine thought I was the greatest artist in the world.  I did one of a GF and she insisted on keeping it, even after I told her how I did it.

The process is just like what happens when you project onto a sheet of photo paper, where the light parts of the negative's  image are developed into the dark parts of the final photograph.

I tried doing this once many many years later when MS-paint could both decolorize a photo into B&W, and reverse the image colors, thereby making it into a B&W negative, then putting a printout of this "negative" on a light box with a sheet of paper over it, and doing the same thing by transmitted light.

I even piddled around with the process by printing out the "negatives" onto transparent overhead projector sheets instead of regular paper.

It all worked out sorta-ok, but it wasn't worth the time and effort, really, to just be an ersatz artist.

Terry, 230RN

[HankB]

When I was a kid, I remember they were advertising things like this in the back of comic books - the illustration looked a lot like a simple overhead projector being used in reverse.

[geronimotwo]

I can't draw worth a darn, but while I was in "chemical"  photography, I found I could take a negative, project it through the enlarger onto a sheet of regular typing paper in the enlarger easel, then just fill in the lighter parts with pencil until the whole sheet looked pretty uniformly gray.

It was really spooky the first time I tried this and turned off the enlarger and bam, there was a hand-drawn picture!

People who saw these pictures of mine thought I was the greatest artist in the world.  I did one of a GF and she insisted on keeping it, even after I told her how I did it.

The process is just like what happens when you project onto a sheet of photo paper, where the light parts of the negative's  image are developed into the dark parts of the final photograph.

I tried doing this once many many years later when MS-paint could both decolorize a photo into B&W, and reverse the image colors, thereby making it into a B&W negative, then putting a printout of this "negative" on a light box with a sheet of paper over it, and doing the same thing by transmitted light.

I even piddled around with the process by printing out the "negatives" onto transparent overhead projector sheets instead of regular paper.

It all worked out sorta-ok, but it wasn't worth the time and effort, really, to just be an ersatz artist.

Terry, 230RN

it's interesting that you take what might be an amazing medium to anyone else and trivialize it because it is easy for you to be good at it.