Announcements:• Our new Academy course featured in November is up and running at half price. Take a look at it HERE. • We still have a few spaces left in our November online workshop, Creating Rhythm with Color. LEARN MORE HERE • Do you know someone who might enjoy what we do? Feel free to forward this post to them. They can sign up for our mailing list HERE As promised last week, this begins my eight-part series that I'm calling Unlocking Eight Mysteries of Painting. MYSTERY ONE: LIGHT AND SHADOW Painting is a powerful activity. The single contributor to that power is the human eye and the soul that lives behind it. Whatever we send to it through our painting determines the degree of that power.
The most important element we have that sends that visual message is light because without light, we see nothing. Light's companion is shadow. The two work in concert, yielding to each other in a visual unity where our eyes find paths through patterns wherever that duo guides. We
painters use our eyes to discover the potential of those paths. That potential gives us fodder for our expression through the paintings we create. Just as music is a universal audial language, so is painting a universal visual language. The range of notes in music is very much like the range of values within light and shadow. The world around us contains potential for
us to find these ranges and use them to express in our paintings. John Singer Sargent is among our history's master painters whose work reveals that potential discovered and expressed during his lifetime, evident in his painting Cashmere. John Singer Sargent Cashmere Even without color, we understand the light and shadow expression in Sargent's painting. And when we simplify what light and shadow show into a notan, we can see the pattern within which that expression can take place. The ancient yin and yang notan symbol means unity of opposites. It is in the unity of light and shadow where we can find one of our most profound visual expressions. That potential is available through our
eyes when we redirect them away from mere images to discovering what light and shadow are doing within those images. Tune in with me right here throughout the rest of this year to continue to explore these wonders! Enjoy an enlightening weekend!
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Happy Painting,
Dianne
dianne@diannemize.com
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