Painting Light

Painting Light-Subject Alternative

How To Paint Light
I teach students how to paint and draw light. I am also a lighting specialist. My fascination with light encompasses, not only the commercial, retailing aspect, but the artistic as well. Once drawing and painting skills are industrialized to the point where students can accurately put down what they see, creating light and shadow is studied and faithfully delineated subject matter emerges in a world of space and volume.

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Learning To See
Basically, the depiction of light and shadow is done by using dark and light colors in painting and tonal gradations in drawing. For a beginning student this often requires some optical skills.. First, I tell the student it is critical to turn what they see to a two-dimensional foresight that they can translate to a two-dimensional outside like a canvas or a sketchbook page.

Powerful Grids
Seeing objects two-dimensionally can be done in any ways. The easiest (and most time-tested) is to develop a grid in front of the subject matter--that could be actual objects, a photo or a picture. This can be done most plainly by retention a pencil vertically and horizontally against the viewed objects, comparing their shapes to the vertical and horizontal lines of the pencil.

Another time-tested formula is to genuinely develop a grid on plate glass or Plexiglas and place that grid in front of the objects. Now the viewed objects are intersected by many squares (depending on how large or small the squares in the grid are.) Each quadrant (square) of the grid can then be painted or drawn independently and upon completing the entire grid, the mixture of objects is done to develop an spoton photograph of the objects.

Light and shadow are more genuinely discerned and created with this grid method. How objects are illuminated can be defined on paper or canvas by observing and re-creating light and shadow at play in each quadrant. In accomplishing this by shading and highlighting, illumination and therefore, volume is created, the illusion of the three-dimensional space is created, reborn on a two-dimensional surface.

Early Line And Color
Accuracy, as well as light and shadow were not always the motivation behind depicting artful images. Before the Renaissance, art works in Europe depicted objects ( figures, landscapes, buildings) in a flat space. There was no light and shadow. Figures were delineated and colored in a style much like a coloring book. These images translated well to stained glass windows and mosaics. Their simplicity of line and color contributed to the power of the iconography, often of religious significance.

Earthly Light
With the discovery of perspective, space and volume became important to artists as well as the depiction of light and shadow. Symbolic icons and images described by line gave way to depictions of illuminated space. In perspective, objects recede and enlarge in a two-dimensional space that is totally visually believable. To augment the receding and advancing figures with directional light and shadow completed the believability, creating a world the eye could observe as a simulated, illuminated three-dimensional environment.

Gold Leaf To Earthly Light
Spiritual light, the vehicle of infinity was often expressed with the use of gold leaf in Medieval altarpieces. The warm, glowing, reflective outside behind religious figures imbued the work with a rich and reassuring statement-the glory of heaven and God's power. A more earthly light supplanted gold leaf in the Renaissance. Spiritual figures were bathed in sunlight and swathed in shadow. The light that illuminated the humble shepherds was the same light that shone on Jesus and his followers.

Repeating History
It is provocative to me that the journey a beginning drawing or painting student takes often replicates the historical transition from the Medieval use of line and color-in style to the Renaissance application of illuminated space and volume. And, with more industrialized students, their journey often continues to repeat the contemporary return to line and color-in, the preference for depicting flat, shallow space and solid color.

I find this reassuring. The art world is wide open, brimming with many styles, images, materials and skills. For today's artist, all things is available, to use towards a creative purpose. All of history as well as the newest technological/digital images are ready to be researched and developed.

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