Cel Painting: backwards in more ways than one


I once saw a program about an artist who was dyslexic and did all of her painting on glass so that when she flipped it over, it was 'right side up'. I wasn't even 10, and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. Have you ever seen a mural painted on the windows of a store? Have you ever watched a cartoon? That is all transparency painting. Henceforth it will be referred to as 'cel painting' because that is the most common use for it--as cel stills in animation.


In just about any traditional art form you work from the bottom up. You paint a background, then a foreground, etc. The last thing you do is the 'topmost' layer of paint, and the most clearly visible. When working on a cel, the first thing you do is the topmost layer, and the background is the very last thing applied. Because you are working on a clear surface, when the image is complete it is the bottom layer that you see, inverted from the image you painted and completely backwards and utterly different from the 'worked' side with paint on it. Observe:


Wouldn't you love to hang that on your wall?
'Worked Side' (traditional top)


Also unlike other art forms, the skill in cel painting comes from meticulous planning before the pen or brush ever touches the transparency. After you've planned it out, it's little different from a paint-by-number. This is why few books on animation cover cel painting, because the blueprint for the cel is done by the skilled labor (animators) and the painting is done by cheap labor. It is after all disposable, made to be filmed and thrown away. But what happens when a skilled artist uses this medium as a way to illustrate? I'm still finding out, but so far the results have been pretty good.