Touch, Aluminum, and Glass
When I was designing icons and buttons for TwoToJazz, I had a very clear vision in mind. I wanted them to visually remind and convey the feeling to the user that they were painting on an object made of glass and aluminum.
This was not the first time that I was exploring art making on a glass medium. Years ago, and during one or two summer breaks in high school, I had created a number of paintings on glass. The type of glass painting (called Vitray) required carefully laying thin lines of a special black paste over the glass to create outlines of a drawing, and then filling up the spaces with special transparent paint. The black lines and the paint would always create a shadow on the backside of the glass.
I had presented one of these paintings to my father as a birthday gift, and he had it spray painted on the back side with a beautiful metallic color with interesting texture and gradients. Light played very nicely on the shiny metallic background. And needless to say, I loved that piece.
When working on a tablet like iPad, since the light is coming from the back side of the glass surface, it does not create the kind of shadow that light creates when it hits glass from the front side. Yet, in creating TwoToJazz icons and buttons, I liked to play with the idea of light playing on a glass with a metallic backside, creating gradient reflections, and thin black lines on the glass creating tiny shadows. And I still get that sensation every time I look at TwoToJazz buttons and icons. Do you!?
Here's a picture of one of these old glass paintings, taken at an angle to avoid light reflection from the glass.
-Vida
