ALL SOUPS ARE NOT EQUAL (PART 2)

DRAWING LESSONS FROM MY DAUGHTER

"PORTRAITS" by Dad's Daughter


1) When drawing a man (like my Dad, above) always start with the stubble. Take time to get it right because it's the most important part of the face.

After that, draw what you see in a band that goes either across the face or up and down. Whatever's not in that band gets the short shrift. In the example above the band is horizontal and includes the ear and the nose. The mouth and eyes are outside the band and therefore are drawn tiny, as an afterthought.




2) Above the mouth the head bends. Paws make great hands.

3) Eyes are over-rated and are seldom worth drawing large. Now the ear and nose, THOSE are the true mirrors of the soul! Adults have HUGE noses! Glasses are also over-rated. Draw them tiny and floating Chagall-like in the air.

4) Adults are grotesque! Shapes bulge out of the face like ginger roots on steroids. On a face like my Dad's it's best to draw each section of the ginger root independently, without thinking of how it fits into the rest.

Pay attention to the muzzle and how the stubble wraps around it.

5) Sometimes it's fun to experiment with pie-plate head shapes. After all, the on-lookers are way too busy looking at the beautiful stubble you've drawn to know if the head-shape is working. Be sure to put lots of tiny blood vessels in the nose and don't skimp on the ear hair!

Note from Dad: I actually wrote this but the ideas are my kid's.

WHAT'S WRONG WITH ADVERTISING

The most striking thing about modern ads is that they don't attempt to sell anything that you can easily buy. Old ads sold soap, soup, cereal, gum, cigarettes, beer and coffee --cheap and easy to get hold of things you could buy at the local supermarket. New ads sell prescription drugs, expensive cars, erectile disfunction pills, insurance, and credit cards. I don't get it. Why waste time and money advertising things that people can't impulsively run out and buy?





Have you noticed that there's no Coke commercials on TV anymore? And where are the soap ads? People still have to buy soap, don't they? No doubt this is the result of market studies, but what studies? I'd like to read them. Maybe feminists and generic brands have something to do with it, but wait a minute...people still have to shop and we all know the generic brands don't taste as good...think about generic Cheerios...Ugh! So where are the name brand food commercials? Why are we advertising pills that require a doctor's visit to get, or cars that we buy only once every ten years?





By the way, I put up these commercials because they're each so interesting in their own way. The Coke commercial is just a straight sales pitch...no dancing girls, no frills...and yet it works! I was salivating for Coke while I watched it! Ditto the Camels commercial. A bizarre woman, shot frontally and in the middle of the screen by a nailed-down camera, holds our attention perfectly by the force of her personality and her weird articulation. Amazing!


And the Cools ad...wow! That girl on the beach is hilarious! What a gloriously cheap and fun-to-parody commercial! None of these have anything to do with the theme of this post but I thought you'd like to see them anyway.








For those who stuck with me this far...a reward: two scenes from "How To Get Ahead in Advertising," one of the most literate films I've seen in recent years. Hope you like it!

CLASSICAL MUSIC ANYONE?

I'm too busy to do a thoughtful post, but here's (above) something easy to put up that I think some people here will like a lot: Jascha Heifetz playing Wieniawski. Heifetz took a lot of flack for preferring minor composers like Wieniawski and Paganini to Bach, Beethoven and the like, but I have no problem with it. Wieniawski was a full-time violinist and he knew what other violinists liked to play. Listen to the incredible virtuosity on display here. I don't know of any living violinist who can come close.

It takes a minute or two for the documentary to get around to the playing of the piece.






Here's a couple of minutes of Glenn Gould playing Bach with Bernstein. Holy Cow! What I wouldn't give to have heard this live!



I hate to leave anybody out. For those who aren't partial to classical music here's (above) something to help you get through the day! Click to enlarge!

SLOW vs. FAST INTROS

When I was kid we all played in the streets even after dark, every night that is, except the night "Zorro" was on. Then the streets were empty. Little kids were addicted to this show.

At the time I thought the intro was the height of sophistication. Now it seems a bit slow but the all the right elements are there and the arrangement of the music is terrific!

I have to say though, that the guy who put this video up goofed by not putting up the announcer's preamble to the intro. It was accompanied by music (not on this video) that set up the song perfectly. Listening to the song without it, as it is above, is like listening to the Stone's sing "Satisfaction" without the opening guitar statement.


Somebody at Disney's was good at setting up music. Look at the titles to "Davy Crockett" or the "What Makes the Red Man Red?" song in the original LP version of the "Peter Pan" soundtrack, or the "Look, up in the sky, it's a bird..." set-up in the classic "Superman" intro.





Fleischer has my deepest respect for coming up with this triple intro (above). First the look-up-in-the sky intro, then the actual titles with the great music, then the whole superman backstory, which might have repeated in every episode if he'd chosen to do it that way. Very nice! I'm all for long, multiple intros if you have the talent to pull them off! Sometimes the intro is the best part of the show!



These last three clips (above and below) are from "The Twilight Zone." The first two are quick, about 21 seconds, and are masterpieces of compression:









The graphics in the first two versions are much better than in this final one (above) but I still prefer a longer intro like this one from the first season. Why rush into a show that depends on mood and texture as much as The Twilight Zone?

TONIGHT I WAS IN A HORROR FILM

Tonight I played a psycho in Kali's student film. It was fun but I think I'll have to move to Argentina when it shows around. I forgot to bring a camera so I didn't get any pictures, but here's (above and below) some photos of John and I that Kali created for a scene.

Boy, when you get to my age you can look very spooky on film. Without even trying you can look downright evil. I noticed that about Robin Williams and Michael Keaton who occasionally do horror films now. Maybe that'll be my fate, chasing people around with a meat cleaver and getting paid for it.

I had a poolside picture of Kali here but it occurred to me that I shouldn't publish it without asking first, so I deleted it. Sorry guys!

UNDERLIGHT

Underlighting is an interesting effect. It emphasizes completely different details than top lighting. Look at the examples above . The two pictures are of the same person, only the light is different. The difference is amazing! The bottom-lit picture (picture #1) is simply unsettling. The the top-lit picture (picture #2) is over-the-top scary.

Amazingly, department store dressing rooms favor the scary top lit scheme. It's the easiest light to do and it makes people look thinner.

Underlight looks simple to shoot but you still have to pay attention to the overall effect. Here (above) a light was necessary to separate the back of the head from the background and a dark shirt was worn to eliminate the distracting body and keep the focus on the face.

This still (above) seems too good to be true. Were the eyes and mouth really that black in the original photo?



Girls playing victims look great underlit. It's such an unflattering light for them that seeing it there makes the girl seem completely out of her element and at the mercy of the killer.


Peter Lorre (above) looked great when underlight .

Frankenstein was simultaneously hit by top light as well as a bottom light.

Above, an interesting interpretation (above) of Frankenstein's head, emphasizing the lower face and blacking out the forehead and hair.

Underlighting didn't seem to do much for this actor (above).

A classic example (above) of underlighting: The eyes are highlighted, the nose is a tall, dark cone, the upper lip is white with a dark moustache of shadow right above it to make the mouth seem bigger and wider.

One more comment about Frankenstein: he was sometimes lit to give the face two distinct tones, with the bottom half being grey. It's a great effect. The bright toplight makes him seem intellectual and supernatural. The greyed-down bottomlight makes him seem like the embodiment of fate-ordained death.

The brow ridge is still very prominent here and it marks the dividing line where the bottom of the face turns gray. Is that just lighting or did they help the light along with darker and lighter make-up in some scenes? How do you like the eyes and sides of the mouth?