Shadows in Relief Carving

[Irish]

There is an excellent thread going on now which I strongly recommend as reading for any relief carver: Achieving Excellence in Relief Carving

As I want to emphasize a point but not hijack someone elses thread I am going to post here. As we have all agreed relief carving is the action of creating a three dimensional illusion within the shallow depth of the wood.

Many reliefs are worked on 3/4" thick boards which allow us, the carvers, about 3/8" to 1/2" of space to imply the depth of a full landscape with background mountains, mid-ground corn fields, and foreground barns and fences.

Since our working space - 1/2" to 1 1/2" for a 2" thick board - is so minimal we use tricks of the trade to create the illusion. Understanding how your eye really sees your original landscape scene and your relief carved scene will help you to put those tricks to maximum use.

The human eye has both cones and rods. The cones see color where the rods see black and white tonal value - gray scale. So when you look at any object or scene your eye is sending two separate pieces of information the your brain. It is taking one color only photo and one black and white photo of what you see. The brain then combines these two pieces to create what you 'think' you see.

So let's start by looking at a simple landscape color photo ... this is the view out my back door, a little after sunrise.

sunken relief - sample.jpg shows the photograph untouched, and this is what my brain sees after the two pieces of info have been combined.

sunken relief - cones.jpg shows what the cones or color receptors of the eye see. Notice that the background trees have become dark blue, the sides of the foreground trees have red stripes, and the foliage is broken into bright yellow, green, and blue areas. The cone information is all about color.

sunken relief - rods.jpg is a black and white photo, and is the information that the rods of the eye send to the brain. All of the color info has been striped. We will return to this photo in a few moments because this is where your brain determines depth.


sunken relief cones-rods. jpg For this photo I have overlaid the cones color info with the rods gray scale info. Notice that when I combine these two bits of information my final image, shown through the center stripe, matches the original photograph.

sunken relief-sample.jpg
sunken relief-cones.jpg
sunken relief-rods.jpg
sunken relief cones-rods.jpg

Susan

[Irish]

Let's look quickly at a second sample, that of a still life photo with a basket full of brightly colored yarn balls.

sunken relief2.jpg shows the color photo that uses primary colors in the arrangement - bright yellow, bright red, and pure blue.


sunken relief 4.jpg is the same photo gray scaled, all of the color information has been taken out of the image.

This photo is offered to show that neither shape or color determine the depth of an object in a scene.

If I were to say to you, "All white yarn balls are background objects in this photo" you would know that is not a true statement as there is one white ball in the foreground level. So you are not using color to determine depth!

If I were to say to you "All yarn balls in an oval shape with a center winding hole are mid-ground objects" you would know this also is not true. All of the yarn balls in this image have an oval shape with a center winding hole yet there are yarn balls in the background, mid-ground, and foreground. So the shape of an object does not determine depth.

sunken relief2.jpg
sunken relief 4.jpg

Susan

[Irish]

So if color and shape do not determine depth, what does? It's the shadows within the image that give you depth, and those shadows come from the gray scale image created by the rods of the eye.

sunken relief 5.jpg is a color photo of an old shed complex at the back of our yard. At one time the previous owner ran calves and these sheds were used to store hay, grain and as a loafing area. At the time of the photo you can see they are in a long state of decay.

There is very little color information in this photo ... a little green in the background in the laurels and pine, a little red in the rusted fence post pipes and in the edging along the left side of the shed and some blue sky.



Working the turquoise arrows:

sunken relief 6.jpg shows the same photo gray scaled. Let's look at what the shadows tell us for depth information. The blackest shadows in this photo lie inside the center shed where the door has long since rotted away. That inner area is solid black. Using that area as my 'standard' I can compare the black shadow cast by the loafing shed roof to be as deep in length as the inside of the middle shed. They both share the same tonal value of black and therefore
are equally deep.

My eye tells me that if the inside of the center shed is a specific tone of black and if the underside of the loafing shed roof is the same tone of black then the depth of the inside of the center shed and the depth of the loafing roof are equal.

In a relief carving I would carve the inside of the shed area and the loafing shed roof at the same depth of wood. If the inner barn was worked to 1/4" deep so would the loafing shed be 1/4" deep.

Compare the same middle shed tonal value to the shadow cast by the left side shed roof. That roof shadow is much paler - a mid-range gray. Your eye knows immediately that the left shed roof overhang is not very deep when compared to the depth of the inside of the middle shed.

My eye compares the gray value of shadows within a scene to compare one area's depth to another.

There was an old brush pile behind these sheds that stood nearly five feet tall. That pile can be seen to the far left of the sheds. Notice that the brush pile is the same black tone as the inside of the middle shed. That blackness in the brush pile tells you that it is as far away from the front of the sheds as the inside of the middle shed - they share the same depth in the photo.

As a matter of fact, the brush pile was created at the back edge of the left shed so the front edge of the pile is exactly on the same line as the back wall of the middle shed ... if you were to measure these two points from the front wall of the left shed their depth would be exactly the same, just as the tonal value tells us.

For my relief carving I would start the brush pile at the final depth of the inner shed area. So where the back of the inner shed ends, that's the depth in the wood that I would establish my brush pile.



Working the red squares and brown arrow:

The front wall of the left shed holds the whitest (pure light) area of the photo. The front wall falls into a pale tonal value, which our eye tells us is in front of the blackness in the middle shed. The foreground log also holds two bright areas, but neither are as pure white as on the shed wall.

So ?!? ... Susan ?!? ... Your eye is just like a camera, it needs a focus point. Anything behind that focus point or in front of that focus point will have less dramatic value scale changes than the focal point element. In simple English, black and white are found on the main focal point and everything else becomes shades of gray.

Notice the trees behind the shed complex, there are no blacks nor whites in this area. The farther away from the viewer an area is the closer the tonal values in an area become. The mid-grays of the trees actually blends in some areas with the mid-gray of the sky.

Notice in the foreground fallen tree that the shadow under the right side of the tree is not as black as the inside of the middle shed.

In my relief carving I can use this by breaking my pattern into layers or levels - background trees that are behind the sheds, mid-ground shed complex, and foreground land that holds the leaf covered ground and fallen tree. To make the shadows in the background trees soft mid-tones I can use a low relief technique, with no undercuts and fully exposed joints between each
element, and also carve the trees to a very low profile.

For the foreground area of my carving I would also use just a little wood, keeping a low profile. I would use a narrow undercut along the bottom of the log to cast a medium dark shadow.

My mid-ground level for this scene, if it were carved, would have the most wood for the level with deep undercuts for very dark shadows and deep profiles.

So, using three levels in a 1" board I would allow 1/8" to the background trees, 3/8" to the mid-ground sheds, with 1/8" for the foreground log - a total of 5/8" of carving.


Return for a moment to our starting photo sunken relief -sample.jpg. Take a moment, look carefully, and decide which object or element in this photo has the most defined contour ... where is the focal point?

Its the mid-ground tree on your left. It has the most obvious 'round' shape of any tree in the photo and that is because it shows, starting on the left side, black, dark gray, mid-gray, pale gray and white. The foreground tree, right, is 60% black tones with only a white edge ... perfect for a low profile lightly undercut carving. The background trees are 60% mid-tone to pale gray with just a bit of white, also ready for a low profile carve with low relief edges.


sunken relief 5.jpg
sunken relief 6.jpg

Susan

[Irish]

Let's apply all of this to a high relief carving.

In this stone barn sample, that I have been working on forrrevvverrrr, the board is 2" thick by 11" high by 15" wide. I have worked down to a depth of about 1" ... a little more in a few places.

The background sky, mountain and trees are very low profile with low relief edges. They are simple, shallow, round over shapes that all cast have the same mid- to light gray shadows.

Their pale and mid-tone values push these area to the deepest point of the scene, the farthest points from my focal point, the barn. These areas cast almost no shadowing onto any other area.

The mid-ground pines have a little more profile depth, a little more detail but still use a rounded over edge of the low relief technique. This brings their shadows into the mid-tone range of gray shadowing, therefore forward from the background level.

Because the background shadows or tonal changes is so pale and the pines in the mid-ground darker, more crisp; the mid-ground pines are visually 'pushed' far away from the mountains. That change is tonal values between the background mountains and the mid-ground pines let's me make the pines physically larger .. I have enough shadow to justify larger trees.

The focus point of this carving is the stone barn. The details become more crisp and clear and I have a wider range of tonal value shadows. The left side tree shows the same range from black to white as the mid-ground tree in the woodland photo we just discussed. That left side tree has the most contouring of any other element in the carving ... it's not rounded over, it's
actually round.

Undercutting the branches in the left tree adds most black shadowing, pushing the tree visually away from the background wood. Undercutting is used in high relief to cast dark or black shadows, which visually 'cuts' or 'frees' the element from the wood blank.

In keeping with the woodland photo we have used here, the foreground right hand tree has less shaping or contouring than the left side tree. Notice how the front side of this tree seems flat, just as the foreground tree in the photo has a flat look.

Finally to see how shadows and tonal values effect your sense of depth compare image relief-01.jpg which shows the center of the carving with a full range of shading values to relief-06 which puts the center of the carving in one deep value. Relief-01 has multiple levels and layers but relief-06 has only two ... the white of the foreground trees and the gray of everything else.

Same carving ... same depth ... same shapes ... same coloring ...the only thing that has changed is the tonal values that are seen by the rods in your eye.

So in working a relief carving you can control the visual effects by working with tonal value shadows.



relief-01.jpg shows the carving using one light source on the right side oft hetable. This photos shows the full range of tonal values and shadows created by the carving cuts and techniques.


relief-03.jpg shows a side view of the carving to expose the element's joint line treatments which create the shadows between the elements. The circled areas note the undercuts used in high relief that free an area from the background wood. These freed areas also cast floating, independent shadows onto the wood behind them.


relief-04.jpg shows areas in the carving where a shelf edge has been worked. A shelf edge slants the elements edge from a high point in the front of the carving then slowly tilts that edge below the eye line, casting medium toned shadows on the element behind the shelf edge element.


relief-05.jpg shows six samples of element joint treatments. From the top down, 1 shows a free cut tree limb where the branch has been completely freed from the background wood.

#2 shows a very deep undercut branch which will cast a harsh black shadow. The undercut has not completely freed the branch but has tucked the joint line out of the eye sight.

#3 is a undercut round over. This cut is not as deep or drastic as the #2 undercut so it casts a medium length dark shadow. The joint line can be seen if you move your eyes to look behind the branch.

#4 is a shallow undercut with a round over side to the element which casts a narrow, mid-tone shadow.

#5 us a free standing element. Where the branch in #1 is connected to the tree leaves at the top and the trunk at the bottom, the top section of this fence line is completely separate from the background wood. As you move in relationship to the carving you can see all of the work behind the top of the fence post.

#6 shows a shelf edge on the top of the rain barrel and the long mid-tone shadow it creates.


relief-06.jpg was taken using my scanner. Since the light from the scanner has no defined source point the image becomes more monotone, less dramatic. Notice in this one that all of the black and white points lie in the un-carved wood surface, the two foreground trees, and the fence line. These three areas become the foreground.

The center area of the carving with the barn, pine trees, mountains, and sky all take on a mid-range gray tone, they are blended by tonal value into one area. So this image really shows only two levels of work - the foreground with the black/white points and the background with the mid-tone gray values.

The stone barn carving is a sunken relief ... the unused areas of wood that lie beyond the design area remain at the original level of wood, the highest point. You can therefore see that all of the carved areas of the design therefore sink below the original wood surface. The carving sinks into the wood, a Sunken Carving.

Susan

OK ... the software says that since I already have these in another thread you will need to go here to see them: Levels in Relief WIP