I love things that shine, sparkle, or
shimmer, just because they are beautiful. I also love anything that holds
secrets or points beyond itself. Some things, in reflecting light, do both.
Recently I was fascinated by the way
people incorporate drawings of cabochon-cut gems into Zentangle-inspired art.
Cabochons are rounded and polished, not faceted, like smooth blobs of glass. In looking at demos of how to draw them, I was puzzled by
the white highlight. Should the white spot be round, or a long bar? Where
should it be placed? I looked at photos of cabochon-cut gems, using Google
images (so useful for things like this!), trying to figure out how the bright
spot works. In the photos, I saw reflections in the gems of... their light
source.
Gem reflects window and potted plant. |
Duh!
Some bright spots were shaped like
windows, some like bars of overhead fluorescents, while others were merely a round
bright spot (an incandescent bulb? the sun?). And sometimes there were multiple
bright spots, because there were multiple sources of light.
But it wasn’t just the light source
that I saw reflected in the gems. Was that the camera apparatus making the dark
square shape? And the shop where this other photo was taken must have a whole bank
of windows. In one gem, I even saw the silhouette of person sitting nearby.
Outdoors, you can vaguely see the trees as well as sky. |
In each case, all I was looking at was a photo of a single
gem, but the reflections told me more.
This shouldn’t have been news--we have
mirrors in our cars precisely to give us information about things out of our
line of sight. Reflections sometimes play a role in stories, too. I remember an
Ellery Queen mystery (the TV series) where the lack of a reflection, where one was expected, revealed something
important. And in Bladerunner, a
reflection in a photo gives the detective a clue (at least, I think it was a
reflection—it wasn’t entirely clear in the movie). A painting that
includes something shiny, such as a silver teapot, might make a good clue in a
mystery novel-- the distorted reflection of a face could reveal that a third
person had been present at the sitting and perhaps even who it was (by their distinctive
hat, say).
What kind of peanut butter do we buy? Two jars worth. |
Reflections also show up in mysteries because
of the misleading way they reverse the appearance of what they show. Someone
who sees something in a mirror sees it reversed—information, and yet
misinformation.
For the most part, shiny things are
appealing because of the way that they play with the light, not because of what
their reflections tell us. In fact, paying too
much attention to the reflections in gems rather takes away from their immediate
appeal. But I like knowing that if I want, I can see more than just the gem. I
can see the world around it.
Till next post.
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