MIRROR FORM

Mirroring, or the reflection of an image, is fundamental to Western design. Imagine just about anything: a classical building (the Altes Museum), your phone, your coffee cup, a modern building (Villa Savoye): and it is symmetrical about one or more axes. All you need to know is half the form, and our cultural predelection for perfect balance automatically completes the other half as a reflection. A symmetrical object maps onto itself with a 1:1 correlation.

Can we apply mirroring as a Form Generation Mode? Of course we can! The drawing at the top is the result of a systematic mirroring of a form. My source image is my photo of a Protoceratops skull, Fig 2. The mirroring system is shown in the diagram below, Fig 3.

The bottom diagram just above the hand written word Reflection shows the process:
1. Draw the original, or proto, form.
2. Mirror that to the left, which is seen in red.
3. Mirror the resultant form above.
And what we get is a holistic form generated by simple mirroring. We get what is termed a symmetry group.

Not all mirrors need to be orthogonal with the form. What if we introduce an angular mirror? The diagram of this operation is shown in Fig 3 above the text Resultant + 1. The red shows the angular reflection of the Resultant form. The result of all of this is the drawing at the top. There is a symmetry. But don’t you know, symmetry is rather boring. So the angular mirror kicked off half the form at a slight angle, thereby giving, at lest to me, a pleasing level of interest.

Two pages ago, we established Rotation Form, which is a version of mirroring, (as in, you essentially mirror the form around a central axis). Mirror Form and Rotation Form are all a version of Transformation, which is a huge mathematically derived path of study.

This is so simple to do with a writing instrument and a piece of paper. And the variations are limitless so that this can go in any direction you might imagine. Place the mirror in a different place, or at a different angle, and you are suddenly off in a new direction. In fact, I would say that Mirror Form is easier to do with a pencil and paper than it is with a computer. It is easier, and far more intuitive.

And then what about a holistic form? Well, as I look at Fig 1 at the top, I see any number of ways that forms complete themselves in a previously unimaginable way. I could start building a model using the holistic geometry that is resolved in the drawing. And that’s the point. From a low quality source image, in a few simple steps, we get to an exciting form. And we did it completely ourselves, using our brain, no digital incursion, and a Provenance Quotient of 100%.