Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

Good day my art loving friends. We will chat about "mirrors" today. Most artists have heard about using mirrors to check their work. "Why?" you ask. Well, we all have tendencies when looking at something, for a long time , to sort of "get used to the way it looks". Our art becomes like our old dog. He may be a shaggy, flea bitten, one eyed, 3 legged, overweight, sack of smelly fur, BUT to us he looks wonderful. If we went to someone else's home and saw a similar dog we would think, "Boy, that old dogs on his last legs."

Our art is exactly the same way. We've spent all those hours looking at it and lovingly caressing it with our little brushes and we just think it looks marvelous. It may actually stink the sewer up, but not to us. We must understand and know that this is a tendency for all artists. Our drawing can be off. Our colors may be bad. The design may fail miserably and yet we can not see it.

MIRRORS! This is what mirrors do for the artist. They flip the painting around and for a brief moment, it looks like something we are not familiar with. We have no attachment to this stranger. We didn't work for hours on this interloper. Who is this guy? Now, we are able to pick out the faults of this interloper with ease. Why the design stinks! What was this poor whacked out artist thinking! We instantly know what's wrong with this strangers work. We sure can see how to fix it.

Well, there you have it. That is what mirrors do for artists. I'd like to point out an interesting thing that most people have observed. Nobodies face is usually perfect. Our heads are often a bit crooked and our eyes are not always exactly even on our face. It's very common for one eye to be 1/8 " higher than the other. It's not hard to find folks that are 1/4, 3/8 or even 1/2 inch off. Take a look at models in magazines. Look closely and you'll see many with eyes that don't line up. Now we get very used to seeing ourselves only in a mirror. Our understanding of our face is, therefore, flipped. When we see a photo of yourself we see the "real" version of us. You may feel that photos of yourself are "odd" looking and this may be due to your own face not being perfectly symmetrical. You will observe that looking at loved ones in a mirror will often be and odd experience for the same reason. If your spouses face isn't perfectly symmetrical, when you see them in a mirror they will look odd to you. Suppose their right eye is 1/8 of an inch higher than their left. You are used to this and probably don't notice it but in a mirror, it will suddenly appear as if their left eye is up 1/8 inch. This sudden change will be 1/8 +1/8 = 1/4" difference from your normalized view. Even though it is slight, it will "jump" out at you because of the "mirror effect" .

With art, you can also photograph it and flip it on your computer. Handy. Also, note about models in magazines: The magazines regularly flip the images of models so don't be surprised by that.