Welcome to lesson 2. In this lesson, we're going to cover three subjects today. The first is different styles of patterns. Then we'll learn what makes a good reference image. Then we finish off the discussion with the wonderful world of copyrights.

There is a wide variety of styles and each artist chooses their own approach to pattern designing. But if we break it down to very basic styles, I think we might be able to hone it down to 4 basic categories; line art, silhouette, impressionistic, and shadowed.

Line art basically consists of straight or curved lines to indicate form and outline. We normally think of line art as a drawing where the artist will draw lines to indicate the features of the subject. Line art rarely has texture, shading, or color.

When translating line art into a pattern, you must pay attention to continuous lines. Often line art will have outlines and long, connecting lines. This poses a problem for scrollers because we rely on patterns that allow small sections to be supported by the wood. Otherwise, when you cut a continuous line, your design will fall apart. You'll have to find natural breaks within the line to create a bridge that will support each of the sections.

Two approaches to dealing with line art is to approach the lines with either veining or thickening up the line. Some will treat the lines as a form of veining. Veining is when you use the width of the blade (kerf) to create the lines. This results in very thin and delicate lines. Since veining produces very thin lines, it is often used as an accent for another pattern style (ie, silhouette).

Another way is to thicken the line so it becomes more prominent in the design. This will produce very nice shadow lines which a person can see from a distance. The line is treated as a shape when cutting with a scroll saw. Lines could be irregular with lots of variation of width through the stroke. It could be tightly controlled where the line thickness remains consistent throughout the stroke with a squared-off ends. Or it can be a calligraphy style where the line tapers to a point at the end of the stroke.

Here are a couple of examples of line art:

A silhouette is an outline of a subject matter without any interior details. Imagine a person on the horizon. You can see their outline, but not their features. You'd be surprised how many things you can recognize with just a silhouette. As such, silhouettes are popular for pattern making. Not only can you do a traditional silhouette profile, but you can also use silhouettes in other scroll saw projects. Often these are used as decorative accents to a functional item, but they can be used as stand-alone designs.

When using a silhouette, the trick is to get the right angle so you can see enough of the contour to recognize the subject. A 3/4 view of a car may not be as effective as a profile view of a car where you'd be able to recognize the make and model.

Here are a few examples of silhouettes:

The impressionistic or pointillism approach is another popular method of creating scroll saw patterns. This uses many small piercing cuts that make up the picture. This style reminds me of the works of Monet where he would use very small brushstrokes to create his painting. When you're close to the image, it looks like small dabs of paint or dots. But when you step back and look from a distance, the painting comes together to form a picture. This is much the same with this style of scroll saw pattern. When you're looking close, it looks like a random assortment of holes in some wood. It's when you step back is when the picture comes together.

This style is impressive by the sheer number of piercing cuts, sometimes running into the thousands. It is very time-consuming to cut as it requires a lot of pilot holes to be drilled, and blades threaded. It could be argued that this style is easier to design as it doesn't rely on bridging of sections. But in order to do it effectively takes much practice.

Here are a few examples of Impressionistic patterns:

The last style I'd like to mention is the shadowed style. I think this might be the most common form of portrait patterns as it conveys a lot of depth and detail. This style relies on emphasizing the shadows on the subject. The shape of the shadows usually indicates detail. This style can be a bit tricky as it takes a lot of judgment calls due to the varying degrees of shadow. For example, the area under the chin might have a heavy shadow, whereas the lines on the forehead has a light shadow. As an artist, you have to decide if you'll treat those shadows the same. Remember, we're only working in black and white. The nice thing about working in this style, however, is we can use our software filters to help us decide which shadows are important. We can build our pattern from the base pattern into something cut able. This will be the style that we'll be focusing on in this class.

Here are some examples of shadowed portraits:

As I said at the beginning of this lesson, many artists will combine many of these styles to create a portrait. The Einstien portrait below uses both line art and shadowed styles. The Stones characature uses both line art and shadowed style with a touch of impressionism. The Monroe picture is mostly line-art (most veining and some thick lines) with shadow accents. The Military picture is mostly impressionism with a hint toward line art with some shadow accents. The bird clock is a silhouette with shadow accents. And lastly, the cat is shadowed with impressionistic details.

As scrollers, we often rely on reference material to create our patterns. This may come from a variety of sources. But since we're making portrait patterns, our reference material would typically come in the form of photographs. So what makes a good photograph? Maybe it's easier to talk about what doesn't make a good photograph to better understand what does make a good photograph.

Last lesson we talked about resolution. Resolution indicates how many pixels make up the photograph. The more pixels a photo has, the more information and detail it contains. If we use a small photo and enlarge the it, we're only spreading that small amount of information it has over a larger area. We do not gain additional information. So the larger the photograph, the more information it contains. The more information it contains, the more detail we can pull from the photo and put into our patterns. Often the file size is a good indicator of how much information it contains. A file of 8k is very small. Standard digital cameras will take pictures from 1meg (1000k) to 12 megs (12,000k). My camera takes pictures of about 1.2 megs which is more then enough to pull a pattern from.

I used the Cher thumbnail picture in the video to demonstrate enlarging small pictures into larger areas.

Grainy photographs present the same problems small photos do. Blurry or grainy photos may have enough data in the file, but all of the details are blurred. We're not able to pull detail from that file since no detail really exists. Creating a pattern from a grainy/blurry photo would require a lot of interpretation and "faking it." It can be done if additional reference material is available and you have plenty of anatomy knowledge. But for the most part, unless your a professional artist, grainy and blurry photos are useless. You may run into grainy photos with action shots (sports), or in low-light situations.

I used a photo of Bigfoot as an example of a grainy/blurry photo in the demonstration video.

Pictures taken in low light, especially with digital cameras, can cause a lot of problems. Often, in low-light situations, the photo comes out grainy. This is caused by the camera trying to recognize what it's trying to photograph. It will use its internal programming to equalize the levels of the picture. This will often boost certain colors, increase highlights, and wash out shadows. Basically, it tries to guess what is in the picture. Poorly I might add. Even if the camera does not interpret the picture, it would capture very little information because color and light get lost in the shadows. If the data is not recorded, there is no way to pull additional information from the photograph.

While low-light photos are not ideal, not all is lost. You may be able to fix the photograph with your software to the point where you can pull the detail you need from the photograph. However, it really depends on the picture quality. So results may vary.

I used an indoor snapshot of John Goodman for the example in the demonstration video. Notice that the highlights on his face are exaggerated by the flash, whereas the background and black colors are lost in the shadows. Also notice the grainy texture cause by low light photography. However, with a little creativity, we'd still be able to pull a pattern from this photograph.

A good photograph is a file that has a good resolution (large file). It isn't grainy, nor blurry and the light levels work well. Good lighting may include heavy shadows, but the difference is that you can still see the details. Good levels would have dark blacks, and bright whites, with a nice gradation between the two extremes. We want to be able to see shadows and highlights equally as well.

I have two more examples of John Goodman that would make a good photograph. The first is a nice even light across his face. Notice you can still see shadows across his face. The second has heavier shadows and highlights, but they still work well because it has a nice color balance. Details are not lost in the shadows or the highlights.

We all know what a good photograph looks like. As long as the photo itself looks good enough to put into a frame, chances are it's good enough to pull a pattern from.

Clipart is really hit and miss. Color clipart doesn't typically have much depth. Since we play with shadows and highlights to create our scroll saw portraits, it would take a lot of creativity to make color clipart work. Black and White clipart usually works better since they too work with shadows and highlights. With a little tweaking, black and white clipart can easily be converted to a scroll saw pattern.

Pictures from magazines and newspapers present their own challenges. Not because of picture quality, but rather how they are printed. If you take out a magnifying glass and take a look at a picture, you'll notice it is made up of tiny little dots. Since there are no hard lines, it gets a little tricky to create your base pattern. It can be done with a blur filter to blur those dots into each other before applying other filters. It takes a little fiddling around, but eventually, you'll get it.

I used this webpage from Teacher's Lab to demonstrate in the video how magazine photos are printed.

OK. Let's talk about the dreaded subject of copyrights. There is a common misconception that you can take any work, change it, and call it your own. This is completely wrong. This is what's called derivative work and is a violation of copyright law. Taking Andy Worhol's Marylin Monroe painting and turning it into a scroll saw pattern is derivative work. Andy Worhol owns that imagery and you're capitalizing on his work and intellectual property. Likewise, if you created a scroll saw pattern and somebody uses that pattern to create a painting, they would be in violation of your rights.

Another misconception about copyrights is that it needs to be registered with the copyright office to be protected. This is not true. As soon as a creative work is created, you own the copyright. The benifit of registering it with the copyright office is that it becomes easier to prove in court the creation date and nature of the artistic work.

One last warning. Don't think that just because you're a small guy, you won't get picked on by some nasty lawyers. There have been several instances of scroll saw artists getting into a lot of trouble by using images they didn't have permission to use.

This is important to keep in mind. We need to respect the rights of our fellow artists. No matter which medium they work in. Here are a few areas of copyright that will interest you.

Obviously, this is the safest route to take. If you took a picture of a tiger at the zoo, you're more than within your rights to create a pattern from that photograph since you own the copyright. It becomes a gray area when dealing with celebrities or people who do not give your permission to take their photo, however. Photographs of other works of art will also pose problems.

Public domain refers to intellectual property that isn't owned by anyone. Therefore, you may use these materials in any way you see fit. There are a few ways these materials enter into the public domain. First, the artist specifically releases it into the public domain. Second, a copyright expires. Works are copyrighted for a period of time, after which it is released into the public domain. You can use images of the Mona Lisa because the painting was created in 1503. The copyright has long but expired. And third, many government-run agencies have all of their images in the public domain since it was obtained with taxpayer monies. These include the Library of Congress, NASA, and US Fish & Wildlife.

Creative Commons is an organization that encourages the distribution of creative works for others to build and expand upon. Their license defines which rights the original artist chooses to wave and which rights the artist chooses to retain. Most of these licenses are very generous and allow other artists to expand them. However, you should check to see how the image is licensed as there are several different license options.

Royalty-Free is a confusing term because most assume these images are free. In fact, they are not. Royalty-free means that you pay a licensing fee to use these images in any way you wish without paying future royalties.

Look through our Pattern Library or pattern archives from other scroll saw communities and look at how other artists approach portrait patterns. What are their styles? How do they differ from other patterns? Which pattern styles do you gravitate to (not just subject matter)? Find which style suits you the best.

If you would like to create a portrait pattern from one of your own photographs to do alongside the class, you can start looking now. Remember to keep in mind what makes a good picture and choose your picture wisely. It will save you a lot of headaches later.

• Do you know of any other basic category that we can define?
• What else should we look at when looking for a good picture?
• What other reference material could we use?
• What copyright concerns do you have?