Friday, October 28, 2011
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Thursday, January 27, 2011
View a painting for a happy brain.
A recent study from the folks at the Emory University of Medicine found that people's brains feel rewarded while looking at painted art. So what right? It's not like we as humans didn't know that we like art. We've been creating and viewing art since, well, the beginning, and we haven't been doing it just because there was nothing better to do. The reason this study is so important is because it creates a very real link between paintings and the specific areas of the brain that they effect, one of those being the part of our brain that deals with financial decisions. It shows very clearly that people can be effected by the way a product is presented. This little tidbit of information is advertising gold, at least in the US that is. The researchers were quick to point out that these reactions are probably culture specific. People who are raised to hold art in high regard are more likely to have such strong reactions.
read more here...
read more here...
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Go glow.
About a year ago I was asked to paint a sky mural for a gentleman in Carlsbad. As soon as I walked into his home I realized this guy was crazy about outer space. I had just found the website of a muralist in the UK who does amazing things with glow in the dark paint.
http://www.mural-design.com/ss-stars.htm
It was kismet. And it wasn't long before I was painting a mural that was a sky by day, and the star filled sky above the homeowners birthplace on the night he was born, by night.
I found the star chart on the internet, transferred it onto a transparency, projected the image onto his ceiling, and one by one dotted in all few hundred stars.
The effect was really unbelievable and he absolutely loved it.
Now, I remember when I was a kid you could by those stick on glow in the dark stars at the store but even if you bought the little ones that looked a little more realistic than the giant ones... they all glowed that toxic green color. Not any more!
Glow in the dark paints are available that glow in a whole range of colors, and the science behind them gets better and better every day producing longer lasting, brighter shades.
So how does glow in the dark paint work?
Well the explanation is actually pretty complicated and full of quantum mechanics jibber jabber so lets see what Wikipedia says:
"In the special case of phosphorescence, the absorbed photon energy undergoes an unusual intersystem crossing into an energy state of higher spin multiplicity, usually a triplet state. As a result, the energy can become trapped in the triplet state with only classically "forbidden" transitions available to return to the lower energy state. These transitions, although "forbidden", will still occur in quantum mechanics but are kinetically unfavored and thus progress at significantly slower time scales."
So really the light goes in, it gets stuck and slowly is able to find its way out.
Different compounds produce different colors, and these colors have different glow times and intensities.
The standard green glows the brightest and the longest but the compound can be adjusted to glow blue or even red (which glows for the shortest amount of time... maybe 10min.)
However shining a black light on the paint makes it glow bright and brilliant for as long as you'd like. The paint will never lose its glowing power, as long as it has a light source it'll keep going and glowing.
http://www.mural-design.com/ss-stars.htm
It was kismet. And it wasn't long before I was painting a mural that was a sky by day, and the star filled sky above the homeowners birthplace on the night he was born, by night.
I found the star chart on the internet, transferred it onto a transparency, projected the image onto his ceiling, and one by one dotted in all few hundred stars.
The effect was really unbelievable and he absolutely loved it.
Now, I remember when I was a kid you could by those stick on glow in the dark stars at the store but even if you bought the little ones that looked a little more realistic than the giant ones... they all glowed that toxic green color. Not any more!
Glow in the dark paints are available that glow in a whole range of colors, and the science behind them gets better and better every day producing longer lasting, brighter shades.
So how does glow in the dark paint work?
Well the explanation is actually pretty complicated and full of quantum mechanics jibber jabber so lets see what Wikipedia says:
"In the special case of phosphorescence, the absorbed photon energy undergoes an unusual intersystem crossing into an energy state of higher spin multiplicity, usually a triplet state. As a result, the energy can become trapped in the triplet state with only classically "forbidden" transitions available to return to the lower energy state. These transitions, although "forbidden", will still occur in quantum mechanics but are kinetically unfavored and thus progress at significantly slower time scales."
So really the light goes in, it gets stuck and slowly is able to find its way out.
Different compounds produce different colors, and these colors have different glow times and intensities.
The standard green glows the brightest and the longest but the compound can be adjusted to glow blue or even red (which glows for the shortest amount of time... maybe 10min.)
However shining a black light on the paint makes it glow bright and brilliant for as long as you'd like. The paint will never lose its glowing power, as long as it has a light source it'll keep going and glowing.
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