[TheForge] on and off topic- botanical forms

[Bruce Freeman]

Good point about dragon jaw.

I'm always amused by sword-and-sorcery paintings of dragons and other
winged beasts that have NO pectoral musculature to operate those
wings.  A beast would be so much more formidable if drawn with
physical reality in mind.  Same applies to paintings of angels.

As to those who bristle at my sticklishness for botanical accuracy - I
remind you that it is one thing to disregard accuracy for the sake of
art, and it's another thing to be ignorant of reality.  IMNSHO, nature
has most artists beat out cold.  Go view medieval tapestries (the
Unicorn Tapestry, for one) and you'll see how well botanical forms are
represented.  You can almost key the plants to species from the
tapestry.

On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 4:49 PM, Mike Spencer <mspencer at tallships.ca> wrote:
>
> Bruce wrote:
>
>> On a slightly different note, I should add that, having had a bit of
>> an education in biology, I'm mildly a stickler for accuracy in
>> biological forms.  Go ahead and invent all the dragons, leaves and
>> flowers you want, but if you want them to look natural, you should
>> at least have an inkling what natural looks like.
>
> In a dragon demo for uni freshpersons, I made a point that something,
> imaginary though it be, that has big teeth, needs a big jaw.  So you
> have to create a visible jaw line to make your dragon intuitively
> credible.  Then (so to speak) the eye believes what it sees.  One of
> the students later came to me to say how pleased he was with that
> insight. FWIW.
>
> For books, I also like Ernst Haeckel's "Art Forms in Nature" and
> Kessel & Kardon, "Tissues and Organs: a text-atlas of scanning
> electron microscopy".
>
> As for going outdoors, the humble mallow -- ca. 12"-24" stalks with
> numerous white flowers -- has a really lovely seed pod that I've been
> meaning to do something with for years.  RSN.  (Oh, and a tiny bit of
> the root will anesthetize your whole mouth, for whatever *that's*
> worth.)
>
>
>
> - Mike
>
> --
> Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~.
>                                                           /V\
> mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
> http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^
>
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-- 
Bruce
NJ

The total lack of evidence is the surest sign that the conspiracy is working.