Light is a thing that cannot be reproduced, but must be represented by something else – by color. (Paul Cezanne)If you aren't familiar with Robert Genn's Twice weekly letter for artisits...i highly recommend that you suscribe. (link on sidebar) Here is this week's letter which has inspired me to do my current painting in progress...I will post when finished hopefully later today! "While Nature Herself has the privilege of playing with light,
painters must, in humility, play with pigment. The transference
is tricky and many painters don't play around enough to get the
hang of it. Here again, the relationship between photography
and painting is useful.
"Bokeh" is a corruption of the Japanese word Boke, which means
"blur." Backgrounds, particularly, are often rendered out of
focus. You may be familiar with what are called "circles of
confusion," those round spots of light that occur in photos.
Photographers spend some effort to get "good bokeh" as opposed
to "bad bokeh." Bad bokeh draws attention to
itself--particularly "donut bokeh" with hollow centers that
result from the use of mirror lenses. Painting Bokeh in the
negative area--Swiss Cheese variety is commonplace these
days--I do it myself. I've asked Andrew to put up a few
annotated examples at the top of the current clickback. See URL
below.
"Fringing" is the fringes of light and colour around objects.
In photography it's often due to extreme magnification and the
inability of some lenses to focus all colours of light on the
same spot. This colour or light intrusion, when painted, can be
arbitrary but is often a complementary of a local colour.
Fringing adds a welcome and mysterious interest.
"Auras" are those intensified glows that form around and within
objects--particularly when seen against the light. Bright red
tree branches against a sunset are an example we are all
familiar with. The nice thing about auras is that they operate
in predictable, somewhat scientific ways. The tree aura
mentioned above, for example, generally picks up its colour by
sliding down the colour wheel from the colour of the light
behind it. Thus an orange sky would yield a red aura.
"Dazzle" is the common state where light simply etches out
detail. Difficult to do in traditional film photography,
digital does it better by looking around and opening up to
shadow areas. Painters can always add "truth" to their work by
putting details into shadow rather than the lighter spots.
Combining dazzle and aura requires the softening of transition
zones. Simple blending goes a long way toward the painterly
illusion of light. As always it's a case of "commit and
correct." I've never met a painter who got the balance
perfectly in the first go. "
Best regards,
Robert
