PAINTING LAB is the place to re-learn confidence with Drawing, Painting and general creativity.
Painting Lab's aim is simple, to clear the creative log jam of realistic painting and drawing. We believe a failure to pick up these skills in high school leads many people to believe they are simply not creative and we want to change all that.
Using the Comparator Mirror we aim to make these skills as accessible and a commonplace as learning to ride a bike, or bake a cake.
In all of this your opinions matter most. We'll be talking to as many people as we can... from school teachers, to housewives, to heart surgeons and to some of the most respected artists in the world to try to get the bigger picture about Art, creative confidence and about beauty.
As I understand, the comparator mirror is failing to reflect the right side of the source to become the right side of the painted picture. This means the result becomes a swaped object between sides, left becomes right and right becomes left. In my opinion this is a major mistake. Else, I did not understood how to use it. I thougt about purchasing one, but this phnomenon of swapping sides of the paint vs the source is holding me not to purchase.
@@chalmhthis is true, the image you paint is a reversal of the source image but you can just work with a reversed source image. Most importantly we advocate for the CM as a way to learn how paint behaves. It is a device that allows you to self teach all the complex, messy stuff that teachers cannot usually describe which in fact make realistic painting possible.
@@paintinglabofficial Thanks for the prompt reply. I was thinking about using a mirror imaged source (sidewise). My main drawings are in pastel, graphite and charcoal and I use the A3, 30X40cm formats mainly using an easle (stand or/and table). Can this mirror comparator fit those conditions?
@@chalmh yes, in fact Tomas builds a fairly rough and ready CM for painting upright in our second 'how to build a CM' video. Have a look and do get in touch if you think our kit would be useful in building your setup.
@@howlingwind1937 it certainly is. Please excuse the gap on the channel. We have been working with schools to build the project behind the scenes but simply email us a contact@paintinglab.com and we will sort everything out.
Hi Tomas, big fan of your and PaintingLab's work - I use your comparator mirror kit and it is simply amazing. Quick question on this one: where did you get hold of a suitable mirror of that size? When I search the net for comparator mirrors, there seems to be one provider in the USA and yourself; is there a good place to buy mirrors that are larger? Many thanks!
@@flipwoolf868 hi there, very very good question. Until our project comparator mirrors were only really used in aerospace or camera technolgy where absolute precision is needed. This means that even small CM's range from £30 to £300. We import large sheets and manufacture our own for our free kits. It took a good deal of effort to work this out but we are now in a position to make mirrors of any size for anyone who wants to experiment. If you think we could help just send an email to Chloe at contact@paintinglab.com. best wishes, T
@@paintinglabofficial Thanks very much, Tomas! In the meantime I did find one supplier in the US who also cuts mirrors to size, but will happily correspond with Chloe first; both of you have been extremely helpful in the past. And just briefly, if I may: to anybody else reading this comment, one day, who thinks "yeah sure, but I can't draw/paint, I have no idea". This was me, 18 months ago. I loved the idea of being able to draw or paint, but had less than no idea. The comparator mirror is simply genius. It guides your hand and gives you instant feedback, without tracing or gridding or anything. Even I (having not picked up a brush since I was 10 years old, 40 years ago) have painted pictures of which I am genuinely proud, using it. It has revolutionised my approach to art, and if you have even the slightest interest or curiosity, get in touch with Tomas and PaintingLabs: the mirror will make you feel as though you can actually be an artist, it is so much fun. Not a paid shill, I promise :) just a massive fan of this approach.
@@flipwoolf868 thanks for this lovely comment flip. One last thing, painting confidently and being an Artist have a tricky relationship. Always prioritise painting and the art will happen by accident. T
If you are after an optical mirror there are many online retailers (although you'll be hard pushed to find one for less than $50). Our kit, which includes a mirror, is available by emailing us at contact@paintinglab.com. This kit is free although if you think it's useful we welcome donations and we will explain how this can be done in our first email to you. Many thanks for the question!
I've just started painting using the technique of priming the surface with white glue, but I was wondering if you wanted a clean edge between two colors, how would it be done? I can make the exact edge I want by removing paint, but then if the second color goes over the edge, how do I fix that or is there a way to avoid going over in the first place?
while waiting for my vermirror/comparator to arrive, I've been anticipating the difficulty as a novice of mixing paint colors. I just came across an interesting related app called 'True Color Mixer' (free w/ ads or paid no-ads)... 1. you take a picture of your paints to make a swatch of them 2. choose a final color you want to create 3. it will calculate which combinations of your paint colors and their amounts to mix together You can load an image of what you're planning to paint, and use the color-picker on it to choose the paint colors you want to generate. I thought it was a novel use of technology on a traditional artistic practice
I received the kit, unfortunately some of the magnets were missing?! A little underwhelming for £20 (suggested fee, which I paid) I love the concept, but I’ll make my own I guess
By the way. The post 2023 kits come with 2 magnets instead of 4. The mirror now attaches to the smaller plastic component (and thusly to the boom arm) with any strong glue. The remaining magnets work as before, to snap the boom and mirror assembly to your base board as in the video.
@@ytubeanon yes absolutely. It's also worth saying that this is a research project so we regularly send specials according to whatever you are planning to build. As for the financial side donations are not expected but are very welcome as this helps fund our work with schools.
Everything starts with an email to contact@paintinglab.com. just send us your postal details and we'll send you a kit. If yould like to make a donation we'll also tell you how you can do that.
I have posted a video showing my version of the Comparator. I do attribute it to Mr Jennison and your work. I would be willing to remove that video if you’d like
That's a good question. Generally painting is simple if you break it down into bite sized chunks. As paint mixing sets up all the other bite sized challenges in the corresponding video we thought it was absolutely essential to show this process in full. That said, if you have the confidence of experience and want to tackle paint mixing in your own way this video is not essential by any means.
I don't really have the experience but who cares ? I made my own comparator and got a painting done. I've been meaning to get back to your email. My plan is to do a second painting to show the nieces and nephews on my silly little you tube channel. I am having problems getting a colour photo printed on a long weekend in Norther Rockies region of British Columbia for some reason. I gotta say. the work you do proselytizing for the comparator is amazing. I'll try spread the word .
The most unfriendly - rude staff and unnecessarily-expensive. (shudder) I went there a few times and every time... a nasty unwelcomed experience. 💯% AWFUL Place!
Expensive, yes-what else would you expect, given the location? But rude staff? Not at all my experience. Go in and ask for e.g., a couple of specific small pans of watercolour of a particular brand and the staff will gladly save you the problem of poking around to find them, not sneer that you’re buying pans and not tubes, or that your total purchase is under £15. When I’m in London, I’ll go in there to make some small purchase that, yes, I could have bought a bit cheaper online, just for the pleasure of being in a real art shop.
The most unfriendly - rude staff and unnecessarily-expensive. (shudder) I went there a few times and every time... a nasty unwelcomed experience. 💯% AWFUL Place!
It’s your eyes focus that’s strained as the distance is between the painted work, and the work you’re seeing in the mirror increases. The mirror doesn’t have to be bigger.
Hi There, yes... technically you are right but try a small mirror on a setup larger than a couple of feet and see what happens. Suffice to say it works on paper but isnt practical in reality.
After watching many vids on the mirror painting technique, they only show duplicating a photo or another painting. So are there vids of creating and not duplicating?
Well, what we are about is finding out what use The Comparator Mirror has. In all of this we've seen that its almost totally useless to professional painters who are trying to create but profoundly useful to people wanting to learn and teach confidence with painting realism. Over all creativity comes from within and is a part of imagination. In this regard the only tool needed to express creativity is self confidence and the mirror certainly does help with that.
@@paintinglabofficial I’ve always been very impressed with the precision detail and and color in the plates in 18-19th c botanical textbooks. And seeing Tim’s Vermeer and this approach with the mirror, I gotta assume that this method was commonly used. I’m no historian, so do you find the nature catalogs so accurate that something like this could’ve been used? (Or, even probably used?)
Awesome it's been really helpful and also I've been trying to get this old glow and shadows to work together so looking blocky I appreciate we have shown me so much
There are already youtube videos doing this in schools from up to 7 years ago, and this video is less than a year old. Why pretend your a discoverer when this info is readily available from the most basic enquiry.
please attach a link here if you have seen a comparator setup over 24 inches in size elsewhere. At the time of making this video Tim and I were honestly unsure about whether this was possible.
This is lovely painting from a good photograph. Demystify is a good way as the person below described this process. Watch this and learn painting is not a mystery reserved for years of practice - but a deliberate and learnable process.
Thankyou Richard, you have hit the nail right on the head. Painting is a very learnable process, its the Art part that takes a lifetime to figure out. best wishes
Looks like you are getting anamorphic projection skew. I’m guessing this is likely because your mirror is not covering the whole view plane. In essence you have a conical view of the image and the distance from the any point is not the same. Effectively you are looking from a single vanishing point at your projected image. You can prove that you are getting this by simply following the outline of a box on your image plane onto your projected plane. I’m guessing it will fish-eye distort. Draw a circle too and then copy it and see how it distorts.
I so agree. Even other optical methods, camera lucida, camera obscura they aren't cheating. The painters business was painting portraits or scenery, not to do a painting but without using their left hand. Or paint but you can only use a piece of straw found in a ditch 3 miles away. The final product is all that mattered the customers wanted a portrait that was flattering, realistic, and well painted. Nobody would have cared if they used optics or mirrors or anything else to lay out the painting to make a better finished product. Its so strange that our modern world considers that cheating, where it wouldn't be an issue if I took a photograph, manipulated it in photoshop, printed it out with a grid on it, and copied that layout square by square onto my canvas, how is that different? We use the technology we have to make a better product. Just like we would use modern brushes and paint.
The only thing I can criticize is how you are standing hunched over like that. I can't imagine finishing a painting that way, I'd probably give up after a half hour. But otherwise I think the Tim's Vermeer documentary and that people are picking up his technique is wonderful. Thank you for sharing this.
There’s actually a way to invert the setup so that the painting is vertical. To each his own! I’ve been at it horizontally for four years without issue, but if that changes, I’ll just flip my setup
@@ServeTheBeaver Have you tried it yet? I had a vertical setup for a year or so set up in my living room lol. (Needless to say it ceased to be a living room and turned into a studio.) Had a scaffolding type setup made from unistrut about 8' tall and hung a tv from it, (so the orientation was that you'd have to look up at the ceiling to view it) Then had the mirror arm fixed at a right angle to one of the vertical posts - Finally, I screwed a bar to the wall horizontally I could set my canvas on. The bar could be adjusted to go higher or lower depending on how big the canvas was. It was a great setup, I wish I could find some of the old pictures i had of me using it. Would love to hear what your experience has been using your comparator mirror and how you set it up. Thanks!!
I have used one of theses tools . I am still a bad painter but I’m a bad painter with the ability to make a recognizable likeness of the people I love. It is still a rather difficult thing to do.
