When Magic Hides in Plain Sight

When Magic Hides in Plain Sight DRAFT

Discovering the magical objects that exist within us, hidden in the most mundane places

This large canvas has been sitting in my living room for a few months now. I've had the idea for the painting I want to do on it for just as long. But I kept putting it off because I knew it would take me away from other projects. A painting takes a long time, and a lot of effort and energy. And I kept having little ideas that could be done quickly that I wanted to do first. I like quick rewards. My dopamine thirsty brain need them.

But the idea kept quietly popping up, gently reminding me it existed. So I started to paint.

The basic light and darks were roughed in. I'm going off a photo I took but I will make changes to it along the way. At every phase it needs to be pleasing to look at.

After roughing in the basic shapes, I realized that the sketch for the painting needed to change. The composition wasn't right - it needed to be shifted over to the right. So I painted over the painted sketch with a light coat of gesso.

This was a spur of the moment decision I knew I needed to do right away. That's why the picture is in such bad lighting, it's pretty late at night.

The basic story of the painting is a scene where a person was just examining some magical objects, what exactly they are or their purpose is unknown. But its about being introspective and finding things within yourself. Things that are kind of wonderful, but they are found in a very normal and mundane environment of the average person.

I already have the overall scene and lighting from the photo taken in my apartment. (Ill show it later on), but the magical objects needed to be created.

I set up a scene in Blender, recreating the lighting and the surface that the objects will sit on. And matching the camera perspective to my photo. I needed a place for the shadows and light effects to land on. I want the objects to have some kind of magical glow or lighting effect.

First I needed to figure out how to create the lighting effect I was looking for; light caustics, those patterns that happen when a bright light passes through a glass or crystal surface. I modelled a couple simple glasses and imported some organic shapes from Thingiverse.com and through research and trial and error, figured out how to do it.

Now that I knew how to make the effect I wanted, I could move on to sculpting the actual shapes, and placing them into position.

The inspiration in my mind, is a kind of 3D still image that I can move around. There are parts of the scene that I can see really clearly, and those I'm trying to recreate with all the tools and skills at my disposal. And other parts of the scene are more hazy, those I will discover along the way. But there is very much a vibe that I'm aiming for... and that too is hard to explain, because I experience that part of the idea as something more abstract, a mix of a short phrase of music, the way light hits an object, the sound of a particular time of day. It's harder to nail down.

So I started to make the shapes I wanted, to give myself a head start, I used some objects from Thingiverse.com, deformed and sculpted them.

This ended up making a striking image on its own.

The final shapes were created by sculpting one from scratch and importing and warping two other shapes. The rendering came out beautiful, and it was lucky that it did, because shortly after this render came out, the plugin I was using stopped working. Why you ask? I have no clue. I made no changes that I could remember that could affect it, aside from moving the shapes around, but it just refused to work. Luckily I had this rendering so I moved on and incorporated it into my reference photo, along with a bunch of other changes.

The photo isn't meant to be a final image so there are lots of things about it that are rough. It's just here to guide the painting. But I do have an overall value map and an idea of what colours I'll use.

I won't try to recreate the colours exactly, it'll be more about choosing pigments that will look the best in real life, the most vibrant. Pigments aren't as bright as pixels, and one way to help with that is to use fewer pigments, just a few singular chemical compounds, that will do the best job possible at reflecting the light.

I have an idea about painting the base of the painting a really vibrant colour that will contrast well with the final colours I'm using. And when my brushstrokes don't fully cover the background, there will be some bright splashes of colour poking through.

Next Ill be transferring this onto the canvas. Going from pixels to paint, I wonder where the physical properties of the materials will take this artwork next. Because now it not just about creating an image that tells a specific story, but using the quirks of the medium to create texture and depth that only exists in the physical world. Real materials also show the hand of the maker, like a fingerprint, adding another layer to the story of these strange objects found in an ordinary space.

https://open.substack.com/pub/threeeyesstudio/p/when-magic-hides-in-plain-sight?r=5tf9nf&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

• When Magic Hides in Plain Sight
  • Discovering the magical objects that exist within us, hidden in the most mundane places

"The idea kept quietly popping up, gently reminding me it existed." + large prepped canvas image - Shows the canvas that's been sitting there for months, waiting

"Going from pixels to paint, I wonder where the physical properties of the materials will take this painting next." + any of the final reference composite images - Perfect bridge between digital and physical work

"Real materials also show the hand of the maker, like a fingerprint, adding another layer to the story." + first rough painted sketch image - Shows actual brushwork and the human touch