A WORD ABOUT TODAY'S POST:

I hope you don't mind when I dig back into the archives and brush off a previous post.  In the field of education, we call this reinforcement.  Today's topic is one I talked about three years ago, but today I give it more punch.

When you plant seeds in your garden, you use some sort of tool to prepare the earth for accepting the seeds.  That's a tangible tool.  You can touch it and manipulate it to work for you. 

      Do you know that there are intangible tools in painting that we can also manipulate to make them work for us?

In painting, our brushes and our palette knives are among our tangible tools. How we use them requires our being able to maneuver them to effectively apply the paint on our painting surface. That is tangible. Beyond that, there are two essential intangible tools that make our paintings work--contrast and gradation.

These two tools do something to make things happen. And afterwards a marvelous thing occurs--what we do with these tools in a painting continues to do that same thing every time a pair of human eyes looks at that painting.

I know that historically these have been called principles, but the word principle only labels, and to my sensibility, it's a stogy word.  It does not indicate doing. In our paintings, both gradation and contrast are themselves doing something. We, the painters, use our intangible tools to make them do powerful, visual stuff in our paintings.

WHAT BOUGUEREAU DID WITH THESE TOOLS

Let's examine a few ways Bouguereau used the tools of contrast and gradation in his The Little Knitter.

I have indicated below a selection of how he used the both tools. See if you can find more.

WHAT THEY CAN DO

Contrast creates differences between two elements. Those differences vary from not much to a whole lot. Gradation provides a continuous linking of or merging with the differences. These too can vary in degree.

Among other things, the gradation tool constructs transitions to show roundness of volume, to forge lost edges, and to soften edges. The only skill required is an ability to blend.

The contrast tool differentiates where light meets shadow, where one shape ends and the other begins. It also creates luminosity, texture, change in direction, and a whole lot more. The skill it asks for is the learning to use the brush as a shape and/or texture maker

Both tools depend upon the skills of observing and comparing. No talent required!

Light and Shadow: The one thing that lets our eyes see.
Visual Movement: What our eyes do when images are visible.
Seeing Beyond the Image: The possibilities beyond just describing what our eyes see.
Freeing the Artist Within (Curiosity): Finding our individual interpretation to what our eyes are seeing. 
Composing:  Finding ways to put together all that we discover.
Drawing:  Searching the potential of images.
The Craft:  Continually forging our skills to visually communicate what we continue to discover with our eyes, mind and soul.

And the eighth:

The Art:  The results when all the above are working together.