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Incidentally, the reader may have noticed the changing style of illustrations used throughout this book, alternating between photographs and pen-and-ink drawings of varying quality. The explanation is that the author was in the process of experimenting with and learning both techniques, and many of the illustrations were redone again and again right up to the publication deadline in an attempt to improve both their clarity and visual appeal. Some of the diagrams in the first two chapters were redrawn by Jack Gray using a computer and laser printer.
Most of the polyhedral illustrations started out as photographs of models, using an ancient 4 x 5 Speed Graphic camera and retouching the enlargements with pencil or pen.
Anyone who has ever tried to compile a book of this sort knows that it is, more than anything else, a learning experience for the author. The discipline of organizing the information at hand invariably leads to new ideas that must be roughed out in the workshop, analyzed, sorted and selected, with a few finished designs finding their way into the book as additions. This process of revision can become unending. Making accurate models, photographing them, developing, enlarging, and retouching is a time-consuming operation, and it tends to skew the text toward those that are easiest to fabricate, especially as publishing deadlines loom ahead. The alternative is to learn to draw one's inventions.
The graphic representation of geometrical models becomes fairly easy with practice and can be quite an interesting recreation in itself. The truth is, many of the designs shown here as pen and ink drawings, especially in the last three chapters, have never even existed as physical models as of the date of publication of this book, but rather only as abstract ideas transferred from the author's convoluted mind directly to the drawing pad. How remarkable that the human brain, given a two-dimensional graphic abstraction and a crude one at that, can in an instant mentally recreate to perfection the three-dimensional model that existed in the author's imagination - a process that might require in its physical form several days of painstaking work in a model shop by a skilled machinist or woodworker. Even more puzzling is that this bizarre geometrical re-creation should evoke so much pleasure for both the creator and the re-creator!
| ©1990-2005 by Stewart T. Coffin For questions or comments regarding this site, contact the chief metagrobologist: |
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