Creating the Illusion of Reality

Ingres, a great French painter, said “How you paint depends on how you draw.”

He was so right! Drawing is the basis of every good painting. However, today artists must close the time required to paint in order to make any headway on profits. Most artists have developed sophisticated means to shorten the gap between conception, implementation, and development. Many use projectors to duplicate quickly their image to the exact size of the canvas, even from original drawings. Some enlarge their image and print it out in tiles on their home computers.

The grid method still remains a popular tool to enlarge and transfer photo images to canvas. Still you can’t ignore the fact that knowing the elements of drawing and being able to use them well enhances any painting. Consider the drawing as the framework upon which all other components hang: composition, center of interest, color, line, form, and shape, both positive and negative.

Knowing how values work and where to shade to create form is vital. Creating a story, a portrait or a scene on canvas requires the knowledge of how to model to create the illusion of reality. If done well, the viewer fills in the missing pieces automatically with his brain.

The finished painting doesn’t have to be a direct copy of the original photo or drawing, and every line and shape doesn’t have to be filled in, only suggested. Creating a masterpiece is a balancing act of knowledge, skill, imagination, and risk. Doing something daring or risky is sometimes the only difference between the mundane and the magical.

Share your time saving ideas here! Carol’s finished paintings are @ http://carol-allen-anfinsen.artistwebsites.com

Pheasants and Fall

This time of year brings back childhood memories. Here is one of them:
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I sailed over the wooden bridge on my bicycle and slid onto the gravel pathway that skirted Willow Park. The trail wound through marshland, giving visitors glimpses of wild geese, ducks, and birds in their natural habitat.

I stopped my bike and walked through the knee-high grass. I refused to leave to chance the possible sighting of a duck or a bird, even though a sign said “keep off.” It was my lucky day. In minutes, I spied a pheasant’s nest. I knew about pheasants from my uncle Vern who hunted them in season and shared his kill with our family.

The nest was hidden in a clump of Johnson grass like a forgotten Easter basket. Nestled inside were four greenish brown eggs just waiting to be found. I moved closer. Where was their mother? Was she lurking somewhere in the underbrush or had she deserted her nest? Was she alive or dead?

The pheasants my Uncle Vern flopped on our kitchen counter haunted me: the glassy eyes frozen in stare, the shiny green head, the white neck ring splattered with droplets of blood, the speckled brown wings, the striped tail feathers, the buckshot battered breast.

I knelt in the damp grass. The eggs were still warm and as smooth as sugar candy. I wanted them – all four of them, but I could only carry two. Cradling an egg in each hand, I returned to the path and mounted my bicycle. At least I could save two eggs -- two pheasants. I would keep them warm and hatch them out myself. After all, their mother had abandoned them. What if she didn’t come back?

I rode carefully down the gravel pathway, over the bridge and onto the asphalt pavement; struggling to protect the eggs and to guide my handlebars. I was excited about the prospects of incubating the eggs at home. I imagined the babies growing up under my watchful care until they could flap their bronze speckled wings and soar to freedom.

A bump in the pavement shattered my reverie. I braked. The bike swerved. I cushioned my fall with an outstretched leg and a tight grip on the handlebars. Whoosh – crunch, the sounds of multiple crackles reverberated through the air. I felt sick watching the life giving yolk and slimy white gook ooze through my fingers. The eggs were shattered. The precious gift of life I had held only moments ago was gone.

Years later this painful memory would shape my respect for life – all life. God alone knows the miracle, the purpose and the potential that exists within any given seed or embryo. Who am I to act in God’s name, determining who will live or who will die, weighing the value of one life against another?

The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” (Jeremiah 1:4-5)