Starlites

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Tuesday August 03, 2010 12:33 -0600

The Star*Lite Story…

47 YEARS OF ART HISTORY
By Richard R. Broome

NEW STARLITE LED FRAME

1. LED technology will give us the ability to scrap the bulky shadow box frame, lights, and ballasts.

2. LED's have a brighter and broader coverage

3. Lifetime of the LED's are rated at 100K hours vs. 8000 hours on the Blacklight bulbs. They will probably never have to be replaced. However, if you do have to replace them, because the lights will be mounted on the outside on most Starlites, replacement will be a breeze!

4. LED's will allow for decreased pricing on the framing.

5. No more duel lighting fixtures. Most Starlites will come with One 20 inch LED Strip.

Special Offer to all of our Starlite Collectors...
Upgrade to the new LED Frame for a discounted rate...Just ship us your Starlite (Painting Only keep the old frame) and we will build you a new frame with the LED lighting...This promotion will be good through the end of the year...Pricing below.

Standard Starlite 20x24: $400.00 Regular Price: $550.00
Oversized Starlite 24x30: $550.00 Regular Price: $700.00

Please Email to inquire about upgrading...

STARLITES!

Wondering what the Starlites look like? Now, with recent digital technology, you can see how the
Starlite's transform from a day scene, to a nocturnal scene. Watch below. If you are interested in ordering your own personal
Starlite, please visit our Store, or Contact us by E-mail with your choice.

Faced with the simple challenge of writing a description of how to achieve the correct lighting of an original "STARLITE' painting I decided the best approach was to treat the job like an art assignment. I spent many months on the project and the effort grew larger with each revision. I asked some of my friends who own my paintings what they thought and received some surprising answers. Everyone agreed that I had not told them much at all about how to display the art once they had it in their home. Further discussions with even more of my collectors revealed some discouraging information. A number of collectors who had purchased paintings from me had never displayed their paintings under ultraviolet lighting once they hung them in their homes.

I had left the subject of home lighting unanswered. The knowledge I had learned about how to create the paintings was a closely guarded secret; the simple matter of correct home lighting an illusive unknown. Most people generally agreed it was a story that should be told. I found one collector who had invested in three exciting paintings. He had never framed them or put them on display because he did not know how to show them off correctly. As my research continued with dozens of my personal collectors, a surprising number indicated they would also be interested in learning about how I developed my unique style of painting.

In 1992, I received a personal telephone call from General H. T. Johnson. He was Commander of Military Airlift Command at the time. General Johnson was like a God to me. He was the first Air Force Academy graduate who had attained the rank of four-star general. (Mind you, Since I was about ten years old, I have always thought of the USAF Academy class of 1959 like Gods!) General Johnson owned a beautiful original painting I had created of his C-130A. My painting captured the Herc on departure from a famous mission he had flown into India in 1961. As we talked on the phone he told me he had kept an 18 inch fluorescent blacklight in his desk and it was a little cumbersome to haul the light out and show off his painting in the dark. From that telephone call I decided it was time to invent a frame that contained the blacklights hidden within the shadowbox appearing picture frame.

The evolution of my artistic techniques became a long story. I decided to combine stories of my development as an artist that would trace back to my childhood. Further drafts of the story were circulated amongst friends and relatives and they all had something to add to the story. Because my father had been in the film business while my mother enjoyed celebrity status in our local community, my childhood stories became the true foundation of my success. There were so many people to thank! The first draft of the story was first published in limited form in 1992.

If the personal art history of my life is of interest to you, I hope you enjoy the story behind this Broome and his brushes.   If history bores you or you are bored, impatient, or in a big hurry, click here to get to the final chapter of this exciting story. The section on lighting techniques is of course proprietary and trademarked intellectual property protected by universal copyright law. This story is a combination art history lesson and owner's manual. I have virtually given all of my secrets of how I create a painting in the process of writing this.

If you already own a Rick Broome Starlite and are installing lighting on your painting for the first time, techniques are presented that will work well in almost any situation. You will have enough information to achieve good results in displaying and lighting your original painting. With this background knowledge, you will understand not only how I create the art, but also what I am trying to show you in a completed painting. With an understanding of the creative process involved, how I combine two different kinds of light and color, you can illuminate your painting and achieve your best viewing results.

DREAMS OF A CHILD

My desire to create paintings that show tremendous color and depth is a development of my childhood impressions of the World around me. I easily recall my fascination with color and lighting. My earliest memories of the attraction I had to brilliance are my childhood memories of color and light climaxed in memories of Christmas time and the holiday seasons. My childhood memories of the family Christmas tree are recalled with great excitement even to this day!

The fascination and wonder of it all could have killed me, however. When I was seven years old, I took a strand of Christmas tree lights to bed with me. I wanted to look at them under the covers of my bed. After my Mom tucked me in and I said my prayers, I plugged the light set in and hid under the covers so I would not be caught by my parents. I soon fell asleep dreaming of the joyous season. Moments later my bed caught on fire! Fortunately my mother smelled the smoke from my smoldering bed and rescued me moments later. I suffered slight smoke inhalation in the fire, but the blisters on my butt were from the spanking I received…

Chapter 2

I have never had any formal art training beyond high school art. A few great art teachers described many of the techniques I developed over my lifetime of painting to me. My senior year in high school included two semesters under the tutelage and encouragement of my teacher, Mr. Bob Corty. Bob and I later developed a great friendship as fine artists. We observed many of the same local talents in our area and had a few laughs over some curious nuances of the local art scene.

My talent as an artist and entertainer were developed from my wonderful childhood gift. I was encouraged by all that saw my early works to continue using my gifts. In my heart the passion developed at a very early age. Some of the freehand artwork I was doing by the age of nine was good enough for me to win a national coloring contest sponsored by Better Homes and Gardens. The prize was a treasure chest book. I still have it!

My first oil painting art lessons were learned when I was fourteen years old. I was fortunate to be able to attend Colorado Academy for a year and their art program was the best. It was truly a college level class and I looked forward to it more than any other class! My teacher was Mrs. Rhodes. Her husband was also part of the faculty and I glowed when they raved over my first paintings. This is the perfect way to encourage children. I have heard that most high school and college art students receive discouraging criticism; encouragement is apparently rare.

My first oil painting was of a Braniff Airways Lockheed Electra N911B. In this art, I apparently wanted to show the glow from the rotating beacon because I painted a bright crimson flare around it. I even showed the reflection of the lower beacon across the engine nacelles.

In my second oil painting, I attempted to paint a night scene of the skyline of New York City. The painting was directed toward capturing the night-lights and color of the city at night. I could see the image in my mind and knew how to show the perspective but I did not have skills to convey this with oil paints on canvas. I recall being frustrated with the great difficulty of the painting. I was not satisfied with the results. The painting was never finished. I sought guidance from my teacher who suggested starting a third, less complicated subject. What I actually did with both of these paintings was even more complicated than what I had been attempting.

My original painting of the New York City skyline was painted when I was fourteen years old. Completion of the painting would never happen and the original work was abandoned. The discarded painting was not discovered until I was forty years old. My mother had stored it in 1965, along with my third original painting. She discovered the painting in 1986.

In every way, these two paintings are "primitive" paintings. Moreover, yet you can see several contemporary art styles had influenced both paintings. The New York skyline is obviously a cubist form of expression. The diffusion of background light is very painterly. The lower left corner features an obvious solitary tree hanging in space. Works I had seen of the great artist Salvador Dali most likely inspired this…

Chapter 3

There is no way I can explain the coincidences. (Real pilots know this: There are no coincidences in aviation!) I had forgotten this was also most likely my first painting created with fluorescent colors. Mom was sure it was and we put it under blacklight and found the colors were still quite brilliant after a lifetime of years. As a nocturnal scene, the painting shows stars and a crescent moon. The lighting angles are correct for our actual home location. I do know that I created this painting without a concept of how lighting and color worked. It was not copied out of a magazine or from a photo; it was created from imagination. Every idea and brush stroke is mine. You can see the hidden silhouette of two different views of an airliner in the evening sky. One is in a cloud that turns into an approaching airliner when viewed under blacklight.

Could a fourteen-year old school boy imagine where he would live when he grew up? Was there a supernatural force working in 1962 when this extraordinary painting was created? I have no idea.

I do know that I have a perfect example of how my imagination works freely in creating exciting paintings of subjects that exhibit real color and lighting effects. To me, this is a visual foundation of my personal belief that my artistic talents are a pure gift. God works in mysterious ways! I am a very spiritual person and a true believer. To me my talents are being used for His glory, not mine.

My childlike wonder and faith have never been shaken despite many challenges and tragedies in our lives. Religion, on the other hand, is a very personal matter. Moreover, for those matters I deferred my lack of experience to an explanation that was given to me by my best friend, Apollo 15 Astronaut Jim Irwin. As I learn to understand these personal matters, I will tell that story on our Apollo15.com website.

THE ACCIDENTAL DISCOVERY

With this as a historical background, two other details come to mind about how the process of my painting with fluorescent color and blacklight illumination evolved at that time. The first was the tragedy of my dear parent's divorce. The second factor was how my time was occupied during those difficult years. It was an era of great emotional turmoil for our family. Up until my parents separated, our family had been given great blessings and joy.

Shortly after my parents split up and later were divorced, I found myself caught in the middle. Up until that time, I had really been blessed. The breakup of my parent's marriage resulted in a lot of dysfunctional behavior with many members of the family. Their breakup became the center of all family affairs from 1959 until 1961. To a child this was a long time. I was sent to live with relatives during this transition. Our home was never the same.

I found great satisfaction in both drawing airplane pictures and building models. The summer of 1959 and 1961, were spent living with my Uncle Jim Smith and his family at Webb Air Force Base in Big Spring Texas. My Uncle Jim was a young Air Force captain serving as maintenance officer. He took me to the base many times. I learned many important lessons in life from my Uncle Jim and decided I wanted a career in aviation.

I was active in Boy Scouts, athletics in school and eagerly waited the day I would turn thirteen years old. That was the day I joined the Civil Air Patrol. My family had great wealth and I was never wanting for needs. All of the Broome children were raised with great appreciation for Nature, God's Will, and a strong emphasis on the Golden Rule.

My development years between the ages of 12 and 15 were spent living with different relatives for long periods of time. I was blessed to learn great lessons in life from all my loving relatives who pitched in to help my Mom out after she became responsible for four young boys. Tragedy in later life would claim the lives of two of my brothers.

I built a nice art studio in the basement of our new home in Littleton and had an area where I painted and another area where I built model airplanes. I also had a very nice train layout! Growing up is hard to do when a kid has so many wonderful toys!

Quite by accident, I plugged in the old party blacklights one evening and noticed that my models would glow under the purple light. In those years the Air Force (and many civilian operators) painted real aircraft with bold Dayglow colors. This was an effort to make the aircraft more visible to avoid mid air collisions. My Uncle Jim had moved to Denver and he helped me locate the correct colors to apply to my models.

I also used these brilliant paints on my third oil painting of my dream home. Therefore, it can accurately be told that my first Starlite painting was created by accident! Almost all of my original paintings since 1962 have been created with the fluorescent colors. In addition, nearly every painting was of an airplane.

Incidentally, it was previously noted that my only formal art training was in the art classes in high school. It should be noted that I received an "F" from Mr. Dean, my art teacher at Littleton High School, in the first semester of my junior year. I failed because I did not turn in all my assignments and flunked the art history tests! Nevertheless, here are a few of the illustrations in my art portfolio from that class…

Chapter 5

THE THEATER OF ART

I was able to develop a personal philosophy about my paintings early in my career. My aviation/art philosophy incorporated both my aviation philosophy and my artistic philosophy. My aviation philosophy was to depict the beauty of flight. Special attention to detail and historical accuracy were natural extensions of my education as a pilot, mechanic, and aeronautical engineer.

The simple artistic philosophy that I developed as an adult was no more than an extension of my childhood impressions of color and light. I found that the natural gifts and talents I was using were repeating in my paintings through the dramatic use of color and light. The most important similarities found in all of my painting were to show the beauty of flight through the dramatic use of color. The way I would play with light in my creations became obsessive. My canvas became my theater.

COLOR PRESENTATION AND LIGHTING

The use of fluorescent colors really let me do this dramatically. The more knowledge I gained about color and light the more I experimented with it. I would depict light the same way I had seen it work in nature and not be concerned with how much time it took me to do it. Many of my techniques were developed through experimentation. Time-lapse photographs of paintings in progress were studied to see how colors mixed and how any given painting developed and progressed over a period of time.

The materials and processes I used to combine the colors under blacklight were closely guarded secrets. During certain steps in the painting, I was more of a technician in how I would combine colors that fluoresced under blacklight with colors that reflected in normal light. By controlling this use of color in a rather complicated fashion I could depict time and make shadows move across the face of a mountain as the lighting changed.

Color is presented to the human eye in two fashions. The terms used to describe these are additive and subtractive color. Additive colors come from light itself. A television screen or photographic color transparency is a good example of additive color at work. Subtractive color is actually the way the human eye reacts to seeing additive color work on an object. This is complicated to explain. All the color you see in other artist's paintings is subtractive color. This is also termed reflective color. My originals have much more. They really are two paintings in one and thus display color and light together in the same fashion as we see in real life.

MIXING COLOR AND LIGHT

Most people know that to get a green color you mix blue and yellow. When an artist mixes color for a painting this is the formula and process that is applied. In subtractive color, there are three primary colors. They are Red Yellow and Blue. You probably learned this in elementary school Back to the example of a color television screen for a moment. The image you see presented to you on that screen is actually colored light. These are the additive colors and the color wheel for mixing them is quite different than the subtractive color wheel.

Color in nature mixes according to these two different color wheels depending on whether we are viewing subtractive (reflective color) or additive color (actual light frequencies). Of course, what you see in nature is a combination of these. Almost all the color on an object is subtractive in nature, and reflective unless we are actually looking at light. If you were to spend the day looking out a window, you would see the color of your view change dramatically. This could be measured with sophisticated instruments.

The most dramatic color changes take place when the sun is very low on either horizon either during the sunrise or sunset. During either the sunrise or sunset, light from the sun is also of a lower frequency and more orange. This is because the sunlight is bent as it enters the atmosphere. This lower wavelength colored light would affect the earth's landscape you were viewing and change the reflected colors according to the intensity of that light. A brilliant orange sunset illuminates the landscape around us we see reflected light at work in combination of all colors. Moreover, the image presented to our brain is "filtered" by all of these millions of color combinations.

Inside our home we see our room illuminated by light and all the color is reflected back to our brain in millions of different combinations. This is what I do in a STARLITE original painting. I filter and combine both additive and subtractive color. The additive color is in the fluorescence and the subtractive color is in the actual paint pigment. Blacklight is used to energize the fluorescence. Regular incandescent light is used to reflect the pigmentation. By varying the frequency of the regular room lighting -- while holding the fluorescence of the blacklight constant -- my painting is actually going through a sunrise or sunset. It is quite complicated but it works.

BLACKLIGHT BLUE & THE TECHNICAL ASPECTS

OF CREATING MY PAINTINGS

Before explaining how I can do this in one of my original paintings or Starlite derivative originals, I want to introduce one other variable factor. As noted, in the spectrum of color -- whether additive or subtractive -- color can actually be measured by the frequencies of its wavelength or vibration. These frequencies place the red and blue at opposite ends of the scale or color wheel. All other color is in between these two frequencies of visible light. This is called the "color spectrum" and it varies in frequency from very low to very high. The human eye is limited in the frequencies we are allowed to see. These frequencies react in much the same as radio frequency waves or other forms of very high frequency vibrating energy sources.

All light is a source of energy. When you see a rainbow, you are seeing all of the different wavelengths and light frequencies as I have explained. As an aside, behavioral scientists determined that the rotating beacon lights used on emergency vehicles would be much more effective if one was red and one was blue. Most emergency vehicles now have both of these colors on their light bars. Before this was specified most emergency beacons were a red flashing low frequency light. A person who is legally color-blind might not see a red light but they would see the other color of flashing lights and recognize the emergency vehicle. Now it is standard to have both low and high frequency lights on emergency vehicles. They are now far more visible.

This is a long wave frequency of light that glows a purple color and is visible to the human eye. Inside the glass- tube is a filter that prevents any other frequency of light from being transmitted. This is also known as "safe" blacklight. The actual ultraviolet light is invisible. When this frequency of energy is focused on my painting colors I have mixed and contain my additive chemicals, will absorb this blacklight energy and actually transmit back a frequency or color very visible to the human eye.

This is why a wing tip navigation light or rotating beacon looks so real. The light is actually on! A word of Caution and Warning: Never attempt to view one of my paintings or Starlite derivatives and Starlite prints using any other type of ultra violet lighting, such as a suntan lamp. Every ultraviolet light source except BLACKLIGHT BLUE fluorescent tubes emit harmful ultra violet radiation and should never be used to illuminate my art. Also, the popular blacklight "spot lights" sold in novelty stores are also the wrong frequency and will not illuminate my paintings. These unsafe unfiltered ultraviolet lights can also cause skin to burn and damage to your eyes! Any ultraviolet frequency of light other than blacklight blue is dangerous.

Most of us are familiar with warnings about harmful ultraviolet light. Natural ultraviolet is dangerous and can truly cause problems. Especially harmful are lights that put out a frequency of blacklight that is just an angstrom unit above visible blue. The types of lights used as germicidal sterilizing units emit a frequency of 280 manometers.

The colors I use in combination with the method in which they are applied to the painting will cause the correct blacklight blue energy to be reflected from some areas of the painting or transmitted back to your eyes as real visible light. This is a controlled frequency. As described earlier, my paintings will not respond favorably to any frequency of ultraviolet radiation or light other than safe blacklight blue. This energy can not be transmitted through an incandescent light bulb or spotlight and must be generated by fluorescent tube.

ILLUMINATING MY ORIGINAL PAINTINGS

For the small 18-inch fixture, it is in the best position to give great results if it is no farther than two feet from the painting. If the location of your blacklight fixture will be farther away than this distance consider an additional fixture. It is best to try to hide the light fixture and keep the energy directed toward the center of the painting. A pair of lights -- one above and one below -- would work fine. Hiding the light is usually difficult and some care must be taken to avoid the fixture showing.