Constructing a Transparency Viewfinder

Introduction: Michel Jacobs, author of a well-regarded work on Dynamic Symmetry, recommends the use of a transparent grid rather than painstakingly drawing the grid on each panel:@1920. Here's a public domain pdf of his dynamic symmetry book: HERE. One point of disagreement with others is that Jacobs emphasizes a principal point of interest (as do I) but others say this is not necessary; the composition as a whole must be used. And it can have many different points of interest. The important point is how they relate to each other and in fact lead to each other.

I have a Kindle copy as well as a paperback. Very little math.

The main point here is that others have recommended the use of a transparency.

These are the 5x7 images I created using photoshop using the 'canvas' sizing to create the 5x7 final result. Right click on an image to download. Unfortunately the downloaded images are smaller. Resize them in Preview to 5 x 7 or in any other jpg viewer you use.

You can print these directly on transparency film (see below) or insert these into a word document and print two at a time.





The resulting transparencies could be glued to mats (see below) or used as is. I've seen these transparencies 'attached' to phones with cameras with a double-sided tape for use in the field without the mat.

From scratch: 

Materials: 

  • 5x7 Mats with (preferably) a 4x6 opening. Available at Michaels. There are nice double mats (2.99) but the single mats seem to be okay (1.99). Single mats are available on Amazon - in large quantities at lower prices- many to choose from. They seem a little flimsier but if they are weighted down after gluing they should be okay.
  • Elmer's glue sticks
  • Transparency Film: 8 1/2 x 11  for standard water based ink, suitable for inkjet printers. The brands I know seem not to be available right now. Write to me for more information: karen.halbet@gmail.com

App: Photoshop. (may skip if use the images provided; many more images are available.  Write to karen.halbert@gmail.com for more information.  I used photoshop to create a nice gray frame (5x7 canvas) around the approximately 3x4 armature image.  Alternatively one could simply center the 3x4 image on a paper and print it on the transparency.

Directions:

  1. Print the desired 5x7 matted image on transparency film, cutting it out appropriately.
  2. Apply the glue stick to the mat edge and 'glue' the 5x7 transparency to it.
  3. Then you may view/superimpose the 'framed' image over your phone camera and align the view with the grid.

Photographs of finished 4:3 transparency:

Front:


Back:



Popular posts from this blog

Color Wheel Revisited

Image
We will be using the triadic color wheel from the Color Wheel Company to illustrate color relationships. a good resource is the book, Color is Everything, by Dan Bartges, a book with thorough descriptions of this tool (I will have it in the workshop for you to peruse).  Triadic Color Wheel from the Color Wheel Company: Study of the Triadic Color Wheel. The color wheel provides 12 hues around the circle on each side  On the one side we can see the effects of mixing red, yellow and blue and white and black with each of the 12 hues by rotating the wheel. This side also has a value scale that can be matched up with each of the hues to identify the value of each hue. The second side shows the tint, tone and shade for each of the hues. Directions are provided for determining analogous colors, complementaries , split complements, triads and tetrads. We will be discussing these at length. For a preliminary website link with definitions see:  http://www.tigercolor.com/col
Read more

(extra) Color Palette Examples

Image
==================================== Limited palette of Don Finkeldei: www.finkeldeistudio.com. I have studied with Don and used his method extensively. He has many articles on the topic that are well worth reading and re-reading. His color charts, are quite useful and found in a new article on the website. His color palette consists of the Utrecht Artist Oils: cadmium yellow light, cadmium red light, ultramarine blue plus white, as well as alizarin crimson and viridian for transparent darks and sometimes the convenience color, cadmium orange.  He creates a few values of greys from a dark formed by the yellow, red and blue to be used in the mixing.  He also uses his AC/V transparent dark for accents. He pre-mixes his colors on the palette. ==================================== String Palette: I would like to include some material here on the palette of strings based on the Munsell theory, that formed my very first palette for oil painting. My instructor was the artist, Kei
Read more

(extra) Color Mixing on the web with online Apps with RGB and CMYK

Image
May begin color mixing by studying color pickers provided by on-line tools. These are based on the RGB color wheel for web development, with its additive nature.   So first, an explanation of the RGB colors on the color wheel. We will see the representation of the R, G, B hues as 'hexadecimal'; e.g., red is #FF0000, where the FF masks the red perfectly and 00 masks the green and blue perfectly, but you will notice that the third hue in these tertiaries are masked with 7F. Binary numbers are 0's and 1's; 7 = 0111 in binary; F = 1111 in binary, so we see 0, 7 and F here. White would be FFFFF a perfect mix of R, G and B, while Black is 000000, a complete absence of an R, G or B. Yellow, magenta and cyan are complements of blue, green and red in this scheme.  In fact the hexadecimal notation for these complements has '1's in place of '0' and vice versa for the primaries and secondaries.  The tertiaries are aligned somewhat differently., with 7F m
Read more