Tim's Vermeer

[BaalChatzaf]

Oh yeah, his discovery with the concave mirror, relieving himself of the dark room, was great. But did they have concave mirrors of quality back then......

Great post.

Newton had a good concave mirror. He invented the reflecting telescope.

[Brant Gaede]

Oh yeah, his discovery with the concave mirror, relieving himself of the dark room, was great. But did they have concave mirrors of quality back then......

Great post.

Newton had a good concave mirror. He invented the reflecting telescope.

The best and biggest concave mirrors are produced today in Tucson under the university's football stadium. The material is spun on a continually rotating platform. I think the current production is headed to Chile.

--Brant

[Jonathan]

So much for the theory advocated in the film Tim's Vermeer.

https://apnews.com/4e5a6f3b783b041e91a13c7a5e39713f

"...research with infrared imaging showed that he began composing the work in shades of brown and black. He then drew the girl’s outline in black lines before working from the green background to the foreground: The skin of her face, her yellow jacket, white collar, blue headscarf and finally the quick dabs of white that make up the pearl..."

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

7 hours ago, Jonathan said:

So much for the theory advocated in the film Tim's Vermeer.

Jonathan,

I have only looked around a little about this, even back in 2014. I was mildly interested, but the issue itself was a little too technical to hold my attention for long.

However, one thing struck me on my recent skims where I could observe the comments over the years (not just here, but on YouTube, etc.). 

Isn't it something how smug and condescending people have been? I don't mean in general nor even at first (although there was some of that).

I mean after they say they were gobsmacked and virtue-signaled something like the following: we have such a magnanimous spirit, we can change our minds in public and still hold our heads high. In other words, before becoming familiar with Jenison, we were narrow-thinking non-believers, but we're not ashamed. Now we are enlightened and you should follow in our big-hearted footsteps. And, by the way, this new information is no reflection on Vermeer (oh nooooo, we would never think that), it's just that, even though we don't say it, he's been taken down a peg or two. Who'da thunk it? Yes? Yes? Harumph... harumph... 

But then, someone comes along and has the unmitigated gall to say they disagree, that Vermeer was a great painter without any of that stuff, and like the Phoenix, their smug sanctimony arises from the ashes of the vanity they previously burned to the ground, they saddle up and off they go charging against the dragons.

That's the smug condescension I mean.

Except, now all this is wrong.

The dragons turned out to be windmills...

It's quite a show...

 

Michael

[Jonathan]

On 4/28/2020 at 4:34 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

I mean after they say they were gobsmacked and virtue-signaled something like the following: we have such a magnanimous spirit, we can change our minds in public and still hold our heads high. In other words, before becoming familiar with Jenison, we were narrow-thinking non-believers, but we're not ashamed. Now we are enlightened and you should follow in our big-hearted footsteps. And, by the way, this new information is no reflection on Vermeer (oh nooooo, we would never think that), it's just that, even though we don't say it, he's been taken down a peg or two. Who'da thunk it? Yes? Yes? Harumph... harumph... 

 

Exactly. And it's fun to watch, and also to bitch-slap.

J

[Strictlylogical]

On 4/30/2020 at 12:13 PM, Jonathan said:

Exactly. And it's fun to watch, and also to bitch-slap.

J

Tim makes a few mistakes that only a non-artist would make (and that an engineer should not make), which ruined the movie a little for me. 

I still liked the documentary though.  

 

If one carefully looks at the stringed instrument, the floor, and the rug, although each appears to look somewhat realistic in isolation, they appear fake together.  This, I suspect, is because Tim painted each of these in isolation of the others.

 

A sense of realism is primarily conveyed through correct values and then colors and finally by their form and placement.  A good artist knows that realism is all about light and how it bounces, filters, reflects, refracts etc.  An orange on a green table will appear greenish where the light from the table bounces into the shadows on the orange, while the table will appear more orange in the areas where the light bounces from the orange to the table.  For some reason, and I cannot recall exactly why or whether we know this explicitly from the documentary, Tim seems to have painted at least part of his work piecemeal, i.e. without having all the objects of the whole all present at the same time.  You can get away with this for objects which have no effect on each other... no light bouncing from one to the other nor shading or causing ambient occlusion on the other etc., but you cannot get away with this for objects which are near to each other, or otherwise actually do affect each other's appearance. 

The stringed instrument does not appear either to reflect (in the semi-gloss of its surface) any of the red or burgundy coloring of the nearby rug or the dress, nor does it reflect the intense white of the floor tile which is conspicuously close to it.  Moreover, an ambient lighting effect from that white floor tile, subtly brightening the part of that instrument closest to the stringed instrument should be very visible.  Conclusion?  Tim painted the instrument at a time during which the girl and possibly the rug, simply were not present.  Why he missed the lighting from the floor tile, is hard to understand unless he simply did not have the floor properly prepared prior to painting the instrument (or never did?)... the trailer does not reveal any clues although I suspect the actual documentary would.

The rug is the least problematic.  Although I see a lack of any ambient lighting variation caused by the floor tile going from a pronounced white to black...

The floor itself is quite fake looking near the rug.  The white tile underneath the rug shows hardly any shadow, neither direct nor ambient, even though parts of the tile are obscured by the rug from half the light of the windows.

 

 Tim gets most of the work right, after all he simulated a mechanical camera and most of everything in the background was present at the same time.  But, by taking multiple exposures of middle ground and front objects in isolation and putting them all back together, he loses realism in the floor, rug, and instrument.

 

PS - Although entertaining, the documentary falls short of being some kind of revelation.  Manual "color checking" is quite easy to do by holding up a brush... (or a color checker See http://drawmixpaint.com for techniques in realism.) but is only really required by beginners learning to see color. 

 

 

[Peter]

If I work looking at that picture and thinking about buying it, I would ask the artist to paint it again but with the people closer and their features crystal clear. I especially like the idea of her face being visible only in the mirror.