Stockings

⬜ placeholder · a skeleton only: ask for this method and it reports “not decided yet” · the worked example’s picture has none · the method name and where a person writes it: appendix G

How an artist paints it

The stocking’s colour is laid over the leg’s local colour, and skin showing through is done with opacity rather than by mixing colours: the stocking layer is semi-transparent and the skin beneath it, shadows and all from the skin page, comes through. From the top of the thigh to the knee there is a cylinder’s gradient (where the stocking is stretched it is thin and more transparent), a brighter edge down one side of the outline (the fabric folds over at the edge and catches the light), and a brighter reflection on the knee; the top of the stocking is a hard edge, and the skin above it takes a band of shadow where it is squeezed. Black and white stockings work in opposite directions: on black, the bright areas are where the skin shows through; on white, the dark ones are. Patterns (a mesh, stripes) are hard-edged and deform with the leg’s surface.

What it looks like in the source

A diffusion model paints the skin showing through as a gradient along the leg, with both the bright edge and the knee’s reflection present, and the top of the stocking is usually a clear hard edge. In segmentation it tends to stick to the skin (the same leg, close in colour), and a word may not be able to pull it out on its own.

Our method ⬜

No code. Choosing method="stocking" passes the parts table and reports “the method for stockings is not decided yet” when painting starts.

Layers (as envisaged)

Stocking/: Shape -> _Flat (the stocking’s colour at an opacity below 1, letting the skin group through) -> _Shadow/ (the shadow at the top of the stocking) -> _Light/ (the bright edge and the knee) -> _Line. It depends on the group’s opacity, and would be the first part whose method uses a layer’s opacity at all.

How a person writes it in

"Stocking": dict(method="stocking"),      # not decided yet; painting reports it

Criteria

The per-group rulers; whether the gradient of skin showing through runs the right way (for a person to look at); and whether the hard edge at the top belongs to the lines.

What has to be decided

• Whether segmentation gives it a group of its own or makes it a sub-part of the skin plus a mask, and whether a SAM word can pull it out.
• Whether the skin-through gradient is banded, or is one airbrush layer with a gradient of opacity.
• Whether the hard edge at the top belongs to the lines or to a Shape, and whether the squeezed skin’s shadow belongs to the skin page or to this one.
• How a pattern follows the surface.

On origin

The worked example’s picture has no stockings.