Is there a hidden analogy to programming that I missed? :)
Yes. http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html
Thanks for the link instead of a downvote, never seen this post.
Paint Is Colored Glue
21–30 of 100 posts
Re: Paint Is Colored Glue
#22I remember being quite blown away as a 20 year old during a trip to Paris by some of the paintings in the Louvre and the Musée d'Orsay. I had known many of these paintings before, from Wikipedia and school books, but it seems to be impossible to capture the effect of an oil painting in a digital or reproduced image, because, as the article describes, an oil painting is essentially 3-dimensional. (I also distinctly re…
https://artmyn.com/categories/paintings/
Extremely interesting, thank you! But my point still stands. Consider this image in ultra high definition:
https://artmyn.com/partners/sothebys-newyork/Michele_Mariesc...
If you drag the image around, you notice that the water has different highlight points at different angles. If you would stand in front of this painting, your natural body movement (of even a tree before the window) would constantly change the lighting and almost certainly result in a very natural-looking water surface. I cannot imagine reproducing this digitally without it feeling "artificial" or "forced".
Re: Paint Is Colored Glue
#23> Linseed oil is also used for many applications beyond oil paint, such as treating wood, to create a transparent, protective plastic barrier -- just as oil paint does, but this time, without color.
Or for seasoning cast iron! https://www.cooksillustrated.com/how_tos/5820-the-ultimate-w...
Re: Paint Is Colored Glue
#24Dough is edible glue.
Re: Paint Is Colored Glue
#25The technique described as "They overlaid many thin layers of oil paint" is technically called glazing. And, by "thin" layers, they mean a layer that is mostly oil, with varying levels of pigment.
Many of the old masters would paint a detailed, monochromatic underpainting, and glaze many layers of color on top of it. Definitely not a process used by people who want to finish quickly.
Re: Paint Is Colored Glue
#26I remember being quite blown away as a 20 year old during a trip to Paris by some of the paintings in the Louvre and the Musée d'Orsay. I had known many of these paintings before, from Wikipedia and school books, but it seems to be impossible to capture the effect of an oil painting in a digital or reproduced image, because, as the article describes, an oil painting is essentially 3-dimensional. (I also distinctly re…
I can highly recommend John Berger's legendary documentary series Ways Of Seeing. The first episode explores precisely this issue - how our perception of painting is affected by reproduction. It has perhaps the most arresting opening scene of any documentary series.
Re: Paint Is Colored Glue
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
He's talking about reproduction, not modeling. You can model the painting's physics all you want, you still won't be able to make a faithful reproduction on a flat and gamut-limited LCD screen.
With head tracking it should be possible to get close. The thickness changes are small, so the 3D effect is mostly from the uneven light reflection revealed by head movement, not stereopsis.
The texture of oil on canvas is extraordinarily complex and subtle. You would need billions of pixels and polygons and trillions of rays to even begin to capture the heavy impasto of Van Gogh or the coarse diffusion of Bacon.
Re: Paint Is Colored Glue
#28This extract is from Delancey Place, which sends a daily email with a para or two from a fascinating book. I am rarely disappointed with their choices. Affilitate link to buy book is at bottom of email, but they seem to invest far more heart in this effort than the revenue would support. Sometimes, curated discovery is just what you need in a rushed morning. Very recommended.
Re: Paint Is Colored Glue
#29Paint, as understood by oil painters and artists, sounds like a slightly different animal than paint as understood by house painters, wood finishers, and other sorts of people with more prosaic requirements of their paints.
Bob Flexner wrote a book for wood finishers, Understanding Wood Finishing, that breaks down oil paint in simple terms for the rest of us:
Some oils (like linseed and walnut) are drying oils, and can be used as a finish on their own, but don't really form a hard film finish.
For that you need a varnish, which is an oil cooked with a resin.
Paint is a varnish with a pigment added.
That's different from an oil mixed with a pigment mentioned in the article, which is probably fundamentally similar to a straight oil in terms of its properties. Maybe somebody who paints with oil paints can weigh in?
His columns in Popular Woodworking and other woodworking magazines are worth a read, as is his book, if you're interested in understanding what you're really working with.
Tying this all back to the article, I'd disagree with the claim that paint is "colored glue". One typically doesn't glue things together with paint, though that is a sometimes unintended consequence of putting something on top of something else with an incompletely cured layer of finish. You certainly couldn't use e.g. linseed oil as a glue in a joint where oxygen isn't getting in readily like a mortise and tenon joint.
A discussion of oil vs varnish here:
https://www.popularwoodworking.com/techniques/finishing/oil-...
Re: Paint Is Colored Glue
#30Cars are Red. (Not true in general but true for a subset, which does not make it true in general)
So no, cars aren’t red and pains isn’t glue.