A Mirror Image

AHA ! Don;

     Now you have hit on something ! I have seen many model work areas in my life and have pondered this. How can that person even tell whether they are using the right colors or not, with bad lighting ? There are many factors that go into a great build. The most important ,is of course a workplace.

     Do you really want to try the " Mirror Image " thing With a badly lit small , crowded workplace ? Why of course the answer to that would be no  .Good lighting is actually more important than workspace size .

    I had to do ships that were sisters, one time in 1/48 scale. Because of an accident ,I was working on a clip on table, in a wheelchair.( don't fall down stairs carrying models! ). With my trusty OTT lite I was able to actually do the " Mirror Image " Thing !

    Let me explain the " Mirror Image " thing . You take the plans and crease them hard. Lay them on the table against a mirror. Take some tape and fasten everything down ( use drafting tape). Now using a clean piece of drafting vellum, create the other side by copying very carefully what's in the mirror.

     This is a simplification. Everything I've said will become clearer when you've tried this. Oh, Make sure the mirror is exactly vertical !                   T.B.                        P.S. Don, I've corrected many prints this way.

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Hence the importance of good lighting at your modeling bench.  Brighter lighting causes the iris to stop down to higher f/#, so you don't need the paper with hole.  A positionable light is good because you can move the light closer to the area of the model you are trying to look at.  Keep your shop as brightly lit as possible.

You can see your nose 100% of the time.  Your brain just chooses to ignore it.  Much the same way I choose to ignore the gaps in the nacelles on my 110D.

Another neat trick...  can't read something without your glasses?  poke a tiny hole in a piece of paper and look through it with one eye.  What little you can see through that hole is in focus.  

Indeed what you actually "see" after the brain gets through analyzing what comes from the eye may or may not look like what a camera would see.  The brain does a tremendous amount of signal or image processing.  It even fills in the blind spots (each eye has a little blind area where the optic nerve enters the retina).  The eye is seeing nothing in that area.  Even with one eye closed the brain fills in that blank area by duplicating info from the surrounding areas so you do not see a black hole in that part of the image.

Thank You Don !

That's part of the problem ,but not all of it  .Did you know ,for instance,that when you look at something and you focus on something dead ahead ,for instance one eye compensates for the other .I didn't believe it till my eye doctor proved it .

I think a photograph works.  Cameras are made such that they remove any handedness.  So I believe making drawings from a photograph should, if one is careful, eliminate any eye related problems, compared to modeling while looking at the prototype.  Now, rather than handedness, I think the problem you are referring to is perspective. Our eyes see perspective, rather than isometric.  And indeed, if you are not careful, this problem can occur with a photo also.

I try to eliminate this as much as possible by using a long telephoto (and long subject distance) when taking photos I will make drawings from.  And, use published dimensions (length, width and height) to scale the drawings rather than trying to scale the drawing from things in the photo. I think these techniques can produce a pretty good drawing if good scale drawings are not already available from references.

Well, Fiddlestix. Back where I started---Sorry