What Was He Thinking?
 

When I finished the illustration above, I thought I'd just go ahead and draw the lines for the tiles using the correct vanishing points; i.e. the same ones used for the walls, just to show how it didn't look right that way. Lo and behold! It looked perfectly O.K. to me. Below is the result, with the tiles filled in to give a better idea of the appearance. I have no idea now why I changed it the first time, it was quite a while ago.Sorry if I gave anyone a bum steer by bringing all this up. I'm as confused as you are!:bewildere

KIm, I'll check out that hand at cocktail hour this evening

Hi John, your Vp's should be on the same horizontal line. That'll change the tiles so they look right. (They are kind of interesting wrong though.) Your second to last drawing post with the lines shows this point.

I think it has something to do with the position/ direction of the table. The 'distorted' tiles work better than the 'correct' tiles.

Another note on the tile:

I only see color variations in the white tiles, not the black. I have the same floor pattern in my kitchen and, despite a shameful lack of floor wax, there are reflections in the black tiles as well as the white. Some of your tiles are receiving direct sun rays from the window. They should throw a little light.

Unless there is a goal here of strictly accurate perspective, I

John, since you are as comfortable operating from the skin of math and science as you are from the skin of the painter, I recommend you dig up a copy of Perspective for Artists, by Rex Vicat Cole. I think you'll dig it. He's got another book, also published by Dover, that's more up my alley, The Artistic Anatomy of Trees.

Thanks for all these genuinely perceptive comments! They made me really look at the drawings, the painting, and the subject and try to analyze what I

Dude!

If Thy Hand Offend Thee....
 

I've worked on the left hand for the past week, and wound up with the version below. I read somewhere that Goya charged extra for every hand in a painting. Seems like a smart policy to me. Anyway I've scraped the thing down and beaten it into almost every shape imaginable. Luckily I have the model to hold a wineglass so I could check things out. The overall contour of the hand in this position is pretty accurate, based on direct observation. The lighting is tricky, as a small change in angle relative to the light source makes a big difference in the values of the different parts of the hand.

I've shortened the fingers slightly by extending the palm. I also brought the light around a little bit counter-clockwise. This gives three distinct values in descending order: the distal ends of the fingers, the middle portion after the second joint, and the back of the hand. I also increased the lighted area on the index finger to bring it out over the middle finger. It definitely looks better in the actual painting and I hope it shows in the scans.

I've never put in so much work on 1/2 a square inch of anything, as far as I can remember.

Oh yeah, I apologize for my awful joke in my last post. Sometimes things just come over me. It's like having Tourette's Syndrome. I guess that's what Tim was reacting to.

The Offending Hand
 

A detail of the hand. On screen, this should be about 2 1/2 times the size of the actual painted hand.