# How do you say pathetic....



## TJ1985 (Sep 19, 2015)

in German? With my lineage, it seems a fitting translation. I've spent the last two days banging my head on a digital wall. That said, I've got something and I feel I need to share it just because I don't want to, I won't, allow myself to give up. Not with this. I'm still not sure why I'm fixating as I am, but that's life when you're nuts.  




I'm trying to draw flames. Not those pathetic hotrod style flames, but the legitimate realistic flames. Non-symmetrical, wonky shaped, vivid color flame. I feel the test run on the right is fair. Nothing fancy, while the left is... This forum taught me something. Looking at it on my screen it wasn't too bad, but it wasn't amazing. When I uploaded it, now it's sitting in the box above where I'm typing... When you're working on something, give yourself some distance on it to see it smaller. Seeing it small, it's way too dull. It needs vivid yellows, yellow leaning to white, more... zoom. Learn something new every day.  

Thanks for looking, critiques welcome.


----------



## JustRob (Sep 19, 2015)

I've wondered that myself but not had the occasion to tackle the problem seriously. What are flames? The visible part is an envelope of colour surrounding a gaseous shape. The shape tends to rise upwards but is influenced by movement of the air around it. Hence the two things to consider are the layers of colour in the envelope and the factors which control the shape. Questions that come to mind are where the gas that's burning emanates from, the shape of that orifice or surface, and how the air around the shape is moving, in a fixed direction or erratically, causing the flame to gutter. The key points for realism seem to be that the gas is burning away, so the flame can only diminish in cross-section once the initial expansion of the gas from the orifice has occurred, and the flame will go upwards unless strongly influenced by airflow.


Your flames appear to be flat, like distorted sheets of plastic rather than complete bottles enclosing the gas. Maybe that is a better way to think of the flame, as a molten bottle with the unburnt gas inside it. Therefore perhaps one should start with a regular bottle made up of appropriately graded colours and distort it as required to show the disturbance by the surrounding airflow. I'd suggest trying to do a perfect symmetrical candle flame and then work on the distortions from there, rather than diving in at the deep end with chaotic elements.


For our Sunday dinner every week we have the full works, a tablecloth, serviettes, at least a half dozen candles, bottle of wine, etc. We even talk to each other instead of watching television. As a result of this we are experts in assessing candle quality. There are some pretty badly made candles around but the best ones are very reliable technology and actually quite cheap. In still air a candle flame does not move at all and is quite symmetrical but a tiny draught can have it struggling to fulfil its ambition, to rise. Perhaps you'd get a better idea of flames if you meditated over some candles for a while.


So, flames are tubes around gas, prefer to go upwards and except at the origin get thinner as the gas burns away. That means that you must ensure that the flames only bend and don't actually widen at any point. I can't see how a flame could bulge halfway up unless it met an unusual pocket of low atmospheric pressure, a most unlikely event. Of course when you have a basic flame you can think about overlapping multiple flames from origins close together. 


Although flames seem to be complex almost chaotic things they are usually obeying very simple rules. By thinking about those rules it should be possible to depict them successfully, but actually I am a theoretical worker where art is concerned and can't draw at all. I use 3D graphics packages with mathematical input scripts to generate the shapes that I want and the computer does all the drawing for me. For example here's my peculiar perpetual hourglass drawn by a ray-tracing package using just a textual script with lots of coordinates in it.

​I'm just pulling ideas out of the air here, so I hope some of them help.


----------



## TJ1985 (Sep 19, 2015)

A very well thought-out reply, and one that has given me a lot to think about. I rarely consider the gaseous nature of fire, nor had I considered how it would impact my work. Thank you.


----------



## LeeC (Sep 19, 2015)

Justrob's thoughts are similar to what I had in mind. As you know, fire is essentially a rapid oxidation via combustion, releasing heat, light, and byproducts. The visible colors and shape vary by fuel, intensity, impurities present, gravity, and air movement in turn affected by the radiated heat. 


That is, there's a wide range of visible, infrared, and sometimes ultraviolet components in the combustion process. Where complete combustion of gas has a dim blue color, soot particles produce a familiar red-orange glow, combining in a complex spectrum depending on the temperature. 


You might get some ideas from the Wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flame


----------



## Joe_Bassett (Sep 19, 2015)

"Armselig" is the best translation in German.  Pronounced "arm-zel-ig" means pathetic or poor. I don't know anything about drawing flames though...


----------



## Cran (Oct 4, 2015)

TJ1985 said:


> View attachment 9752


Not flames, perhaps, but something else: art with whimsy. 

Seriously. The one on the left is a Dr Seuss character idea caught in the act of becoming, and the one on the right is a modern abstract study of the human form, a sculpture perhaps in glass or plastic. 

At least, that's what I see.


----------



## Crowley K. Jarvis (Oct 4, 2015)

Do like I do, and start a fire, then stare at it for an hour. Gives you a pretty good idea of what fire looks like.

Wait, normal people don't do that? I'm a pyromaniac? ...That explains a lot. 

I do think it looks good so far, though.


----------

