There are two things going on to scramble the space in comic book picture 12. The first is also shown in the picture of the Loch Ness monster to the left. In everyday vision, long edges in the field of view, such as, in this picture, the nearby table-edge, the top of the line of trees in the middle distance or the distant mountains, present a series of horizons across the scene. These are major spatial reference edges. We can assume that objects will either block our view of them, or be cut off by them, in a completely consistent way, fixed by our viewpoint. The scene to the left is not well-behaved like this at all. The same goes for the cat in comic book picture 11, though here the "horizons' are vertical tree-trunk edges, rather than horizontal features.
However the tree trunk edges don't just act as reference horizons in this case. Something else is going on. Look first at the wall-paper design of angels by Walter Crane, at centre left (it's from about a century ago). We could describe it as a pierced scene, because it seems to be pierced by holes, through which we glimpse a dark background. Crane has created a striking effect, by making the holes more prominent than the objects in the scene. He did that by putting the strongest closed outlines in the scene around these holes, rather than around the objects. The effect is enhanced to the left by adjustments to the contrast of the design.
Now look at the picture below to the left. It's adapted from a painting called Carte Blanche by Rene Magritte, and comic book picture 12 is based on it. It's in the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, and at August 05 you can see a colour image of it on www.cord.edu/faculty/andersod/magritte.html (Scroll down till you get to the right picture).
The point is that this picture too can be thought of as a pierced design, with holes in the design, but this time showing a bright background through holes framed by dark tree trunks and foliage. To the left, strong outlines around the holes are added, to emphasise the similarities with the Walter Crane design above. However, in the original painting, Magritte emphasised the pierced structure of the design in a quite different way. The holes do not dominate the objects in his scene because of heavy outlines, but because one of them actually behaves as if it were not a hole but an object, blocking out view of the horse and rider by advancing into the foreground. The same process happens in parts of comic book picture 12.
That develops the point made in the commentary to comic book picture 10. There it was illustrated that all objects present closed loops in the visual scene. The objects in comic book picture 12, unlike those in comic book picture 10, are well-behaved from that point of view, being comprised of closed loops. But now it is also apparent that the rule does not exclude other closed loops in the visual scene that are not objects, but openings. One of the great discoveries of painters and designers about a hundred years ago, like Walter Crane, was that remarkable effects can be created by making the apertures and gaps between things in pictures seem to "pop-out" more prominently than objects. Try it!
& Comic Book Picture 12, The Flying Cat
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There are two things going on to scramble the space in comic book picture 12. The first is also shown in the picture of the Loch Ness monster to the left. In everyday vision, long edges in the field of view, such as, in this picture, the nearby table-edge, the top of the line of trees in the middle distance or the distant mountains, present a series of horizons across the scene. These are major spatial reference edges. We can assume that objects will either block our view of them, or be cut off by them, in a completely consistent way, fixed by our viewpoint. The scene to the left is not well-behaved like this at all. The same goes for the cat in comic book picture 11, though here the "horizons' are vertical tree-trunk edges, rather than horizontal features.
However the tree trunk edges don't just act as reference horizons in this case. Something else is going on. Look first at the wall-paper design of angels by Walter Crane, at centre left (it's from about a century ago). We could describe it as a pierced scene, because it seems to be pierced by holes, through which we glimpse a dark background. Crane has created a striking effect, by making the holes more prominent than the objects in the scene. He did that by putting the strongest closed outlines in the scene around these holes, rather than around the objects. The effect is enhanced to the left by adjustments to the contrast of the design.
Now look at the picture below to the left. It's adapted from a painting called Carte Blanche by Rene Magritte, and comic book picture 12 is based on it. It's in the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, and at August 05 you can see a colour image of it on www.cord.edu/faculty/andersod/magritte.html (Scroll down till you get to the right picture).
The point is that this picture too can be thought of as a pierced design, with holes in the design, but this time showing a bright background through holes framed by dark tree trunks and foliage. To the left, strong outlines around the holes are added, to emphasise the similarities with the Walter Crane design above. However, in the original painting, Magritte emphasised the pierced structure of the design in a quite different way. The holes do not dominate the objects in his scene because of heavy outlines, but because one of them actually behaves as if it were not a hole but an object, blocking out view of the horse and rider by advancing into the foreground. The same process happens in parts of comic book picture 12.
That develops the point made in the commentary to comic book picture 10. There it was illustrated that all objects present closed loops in the visual scene. The objects in comic book picture 12, unlike those in comic book picture 10, are well-behaved from that point of view, being comprised of closed loops. But now it is also apparent that the rule does not exclude other closed loops in the visual scene that are not objects, but openings. One of the great discoveries of painters and designers about a hundred years ago, like Walter Crane, was that remarkable effects can be created by making the apertures and gaps between things in pictures seem to "pop-out" more prominently than objects. Try it!