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Developed by Terrell William "Terry" Proctor, J.D.
Curator of the PROCTOR MUSEUM OF NATURAL SCIENCE, INC.

This new art form can be used for recording and storing excellent graphics of your gems, minerals, fossils, shells, and anything else which will fit onto a scanner. Using Terry's technique you can create beautiful artwork using real flowers, shells, minerals and other materials. All items are scanned directly into the computer without the use of a camera. Your SCANNER is your CAMERA and you can do things with it which you cannot do with a camera.

On this page you can learn some about using your scanner as your camera and both about creating artwork and recordation of your collection. Some of this material is from Terry's book on using your Scanner as your Camera, which book is available from our Gift Shop and also from https://terryco.us.

We hope that you may learn to use this new Art Form and Technique to enhance your own collecting and creating beautiful art for you home, office or for sale. For more information you may wish to purchase Terry's book.

Below we will discuss the technique in general and then provide you with a number of examples of eArt Scanning, both for Art and for Recordation. Provision is made that for each eArt Scan shown, you may click on it to have an enlarged view.

ALL MATERIAL IS COPYRIGHTED by T. W. Proctor, J.D. and all rights to such work are reserved. The eArt Scans and other photos may not be reproduced without prior written permission by the owner, and violations will be prosecuted. The eArt scans are used here with the specific consent of the owner, for viewing only, by visitors to this Website.

What is eArt Scanning?
eArt Scanning is the use of your Scanner to create art work and/or for recordation and similar uses. It allows you, using Terry's technique, to get beautiful artwork pictures of real flowers, shells, minerals, live things (like insects & lizards), gemstones and human created objects, which appear to float in front of the background.

How do you do eArt Scanning?
First you don't need an expensive scanner. It must be a flat bed scanner and you should be able to remove the lid of the scanner. Next you need some tissue and another overhead light source. I started with a tissue out of the sleeve of my coat when it came from the cleaners, you know the white tissue to hold the sleeves round. I crinkled this up very tightly, then unwrapped it and spread it back out pretty smooth, leaving some of the crinkling in the paper.
Then you arrange your flowers, shells or whatever you want to use to create your artwork (or item to be recorded--we will call all artwork herein) on the bed of the scanner, facing down toward the scanner lens when it starts to scan. Now spread the tissue over the artwork as a background. When the scanner scans the artwork, it will scan the artwork and the tissue will act as the background for the artwork

How do you do get the lighted background in eArt Scans?
Now comes one of the secrets to getting such beautiful results. When I started using just the tissue and only the underneath light from the scanner, my backgrounds were all muggily green colors with ever darker circles as they moved out from the item being scanned. That was when the idea hit me to add another light above the tissue to light up the background.
At first I used only white tissue from coat sleeves. While in Alaska in the summer of 2001 I went to a variety store and obtained some gel or cellophane in several colors. I found that using blue gel gave artwork the appearance it was with water behind it. I used colored tissue paper to get other effects and different colored backgrounds. The limits are only to your own imagination of what you can do about backgrounds.
I had an old chemistry ring stand (a base with a vertical metal rod to which is clipped by a thumbscrew a circular ring, which can be raised and lowered. It went to Home Depot and purchased a couple of fluorescent work lights which had bases, each of which had a hole on each side of the base and the lights faced forward. I got some small bolts and washers and connected two of these lights by bolting through the holes in the base of each, to the other. Suspending this on the ring stand, allowed me a good wide and long field of overhead light which I could move up and down as needed.
By raising and lowering the light and using different colors of tissues and gels, I was able to light up the background behind my artwork. I could make a number of different appearing pieces of artwork, using the same subject matter, but changing the color of the background.
I experimented with different lights originally over just the white paper. I used incandescent, fluorescent, halide and colored bulbs. I found that while there was some variation (and on occasions I still vary the light source), the main thing which made a difference was the color of the paper used as the background. The paper color not only allows light through (which is why you must use tissue) but it also reflected the scanner light from below back to the scanner lens. On occasions, I use the tissue without any overhead light and get nice effects with just the scanner light from below.

If you would like to know a great deal more about scanning and eArt Scanning,
you may want to purchase the book, in our GIFT SHOP.

Now we will provide you with categories of eArt Scanned work and you can go to those pages to see the subject matter. When you arrive on a category page, on each small picture on that page, you can click to see a view of that picture. We will provide you a few samples below, but since there are so many, you need to go to one of the selection tables, for your choice of subject matter.
NOTE: some selections include other items with the item shown.

THIS PAGE AND THE REFERENCES FROM IT ARE ALL
UNDER CONSTRUCTION AT THIS TIME.
PLEASE BEAR WITH US AS THIS IS A VERY LARGE UNDERTAKING.
TITLES SHOWN MAY NOT BE ALL THAT WILL BE USED AND/OR MAY NOT BE USED AT ALL LATER
THEREFORE, ONLY IF AN ENTRY IS IN BLUE AND UNDERLINED LIKE THIS,
WILL YOU BE ABLE TO GO TO THAT CATEGORY AT THE PRESENT.

FLOWER TABLE: (use back arrow to return to this website as many of the categories below are actually on the https://terryco.us website. Therefore clicking on anything on that website will steer you through TerryCo website, but will not return you here to the Proctor Museum of Natural Science website

MINERAL TABLE: [titles will be changed--these are for placement only]

SHELL TABLE: [titles will be changed--these are for placement only]