One of the most important skills involved in looking is to see objects not in terms of the labels by which we talk about them, but in terms of the puzzle-pieces of color-shapes by which we see them.
The following image is a detail from an oil painting. The detail presents some of the foreground foliage in the painting. To paint foliage like this is to paint a multitude of shapes instead of painting “leaves.” (There are, of course, numerous ways of rendering such a subject. This article describes only one of them—the way in which I see and paint foreground foliage. Other ways of approaching this particular subject are just as legitimate, and vary according to an artist's skills and objectives for expressing such a subject.)
Decomposing an object into constituent shapes and colors can be daunting, laborious, and time-consuming, but such is the nature of painting. The idea of decomposing an image into cells in order to render it in painstaking detail (and in order to keep the left side of the brain at bay during the rendering process) is at least as old as Albrecht Durer
Durer was noted not only for the exquisite detail in his artwork, but for the devices or “machines” he employed in achieving such results. In a device (appearing in the detail shown below) that divided the visual field into the cells of a grid, the artist was able to render a subject cell-by-cell, as though each cell were a puzzle piece of a larger image.
When we look at something for the purpose of labeling it, we mentally assemble the puzzle-pieces of its form into shapes for which we have names. And once we think we have the correct name for what we see, we tend to quit looking at it, analyzing it, thinking about it, etc. Much of education and training in today's world focuses only on names of things, such that to understand something is typically thought to be a matter of knowing its names, or the names of its parts. While such knowledge is valuable, it is not only limited by the fund of words a person has for perceiving and describing things, but presents a barrier to the kind of comprehension that is purely visual.
This is where writers—really good writers—do not stop looking at and thinking about things, but go on down the road of cognition toward imagery and poetry that open vistas of beauty for the rest of us. It is also at this crossroads that an artist steps away from the world of words (i.e., the names of things), and studies forms in terms of the nameless puzzle-pieces of color by which those forms are constituted.
When we look in order to create a visual representation of something, we assemble the puzzle pieces of what we are looking at in terms of the bizarre shapes themselves and not according to the labels we have for configurations of such puzzle pieces. The following three images are excerpted from the photos taken in preparation for a painting. These excerpts exemplify the kind of “objectification” involved in rendering elements in a painting. Note that within the bounds of these small rectangular cells or tiles from the overall image of the subject, the task of rendering the contents of each cell is rather simple.
In addition to the utility of isolating the shapes in each cell from the concept of the object for which we have a name, the cells illustrate the fact that every shape is a color. Light is not something added to a painting the way sunlight, moonlight, firelight, etc., are added to the forms of objects in this world. Unlike light, wherein color is achieved by the addition of two or more hues to achieve a particular color (something known as additive color theory), oil painting achieves hues by the reflection of light (known as subtractive color theory), wherein the color with which a person paints actually absorbs every color except the color the paint reflects. This is one of those theoretical things that can be difficult to wrap the mind around, and once grasped doesn't necessarily make for better paintings anyway. Practically speaking, the main point is that light and dark in a painting are not synonymous with the use of white paint and black paint.
In other words, there is no “light” or “dark” in terms of the constituent puzzle-pieces of a form; there is only color. The idea of light and dark (as far as their visual perception is concerned) is a verbal way of talking about colors or summarizing relationships among them. In terms of how an artist sees, such classifications tend to be barriers to visual understanding.
Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain: A Course in Enhancing Creativity and Artistic Confidence by Betty Edwards (Los Angeles: J. P. Tarcher, Inc., 1979) is a good book by which to embark on the kind of seeing described here. It focuses on drawing, but many of the concepts apply to color.
Not only the journey into color, but the journey of an artist, has a great deal in common with Mark Twain's experience of learning how to see the Mississippi in order to master the trade of piloting steamboats. (By the way, if you can find a copy of the 1980 made-for-television adaptation of Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi, starring David Knell, it is well worth the watch.) In any event, the following excerpt from chapter 10 of Twain's book has some valuable things to say about mastering any profession, craft, or trade.
One final note, however, before presenting Twain's commentary: While an artist must learn to see with all the skill of a steamboat pilot, I have been fortunate indeed that unlike Twain's lament, neither the labor nor the skill involved in my own journey has driven beauty from the river. My own desire, for example, to express the beauty I see in a sunset has been great enough that learning how to make such an expression has been at least as fulfilling as viewing a sunset.
Twain wrote:
The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book--a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day. . . . The passenger who could not read it was charmed with a peculiar sort of faint dimple on its surface (on the rare occasions when he did not overlook it altogether); but to the pilot that was an ITALICIZED passage; indeed, it was more than that, it was a legend of the largest capitals, with a string of shouting exclamation points at the end of it; for it meant that a wreck or a rock was buried there that could tear the life out of the strongest vessel that ever floated. It is the faintest and simplest expression the water ever makes, and the most hideous to a pilot's eye. In truth, the passenger who could not read this book saw nothing but all manner of pretty pictures in it painted by the sun and shaded by the clouds, whereas to the trained eye these were not pictures at all, but the grimmest and most dead-earnest of reading-matter.
Now when I had mastered the language of this water and had come to know every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition. But I had lost something, too. I had lost something which could never be restored to me while I lived. All the grace, the beauty, the poetry had gone out of the majestic river! I still keep in mind a certain wonderful sunset which I witnessed when steamboating was new to me. A broad expanse of the river was turned to blood; in the middle distance the red hue brightened into gold, through which a solitary log came floating, black and conspicuous; in one place a long, slanting mark lay sparkling upon the water; in another the surface was broken by boiling, tumbling rings, that were as many-tinted as an opal; where the ruddy flush was faintest, was a smooth spot that was covered with graceful circles and radiating lines, ever so delicately traced; the shore on our left was densely wooded, and the somber shadow that fell from this forest was broken in one place by a long, ruffled trail that shone like silver; and high above the forest wall a clean-stemmed dead tree waved a single leafy bough that glowed like a flame in the unobstructed splendor that was flowing from the sun. There were graceful curves, reflected images, woody heights, soft distances; and over the whole scene, far and near, the dissolving lights drifted steadily, enriching it, every passing moment, with new marvels of coloring.
I stood like one bewitched. I drank it in, in a speechless rapture. The world was new to me, and I had never seen anything like this at home. But as I have said, a day came when I began to cease from noting the glories and the charms which the moon and the sun and the twilight wrought upon the river's face; another day came when I ceased altogether to note them. Then, if that sunset scene had been repeated, I should have looked upon it without rapture, and should have commented upon it, inwardly, after this fashion: This sun means that we are going to have wind to-morrow; that floating log means that the river is rising, small thanks to it; that slanting mark on the water refers to a bluff reef which is going to kill somebody's steamboat one of these nights, if it keeps on stretching out like that; those tumbling 'boils' show a dissolving bar and a changing channel there; the lines and circles in the slick water over yonder are a warning that that troublesome place is shoaling up dangerously; that silver streak in the shadow of the forest is the 'break' from a new snag, and he has located himself in the very best place he could have found to fish for steamboats; that tall dead tree, with a single living branch, is not going to last long, and then how is a body ever going to get through this blind place at night without the friendly old landmark.
No, the romance and the beauty were all gone from the river. All the value any feature of it had for me now was the amount of usefulness it could furnish toward compassing the safe piloting of a steamboat.
Not only the journey into color, but the journey of an artist, has a great deal in common with Mark Twain's experience of learning how to see the Mississippi in order to master the trade of piloting steamboats. (By the way, if you can find a copy of the 1980 made-for-television adaptation of Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi, starring David Knell, it is well worth the watch.) In any event, the following excerpt from chapter 10 of Twain's book has some valuable things to say about mastering any profession, craft, or trade.
One final note, however, before presenting Twain's commentary: While an artist must learn to see with all the skill of a steamboat pilot, I have been fortunate indeed that unlike Twain's lament, neither the labor nor the skill involved in my own journey has driven beauty from the river. My own desire, for example, to express the beauty I see in a sunset has been great enough that learning how to make such an expression has been at least as fulfilling as viewing a sunset.
Twain wrote:
The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book--a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day. . . . The passenger who could not read it was charmed with a peculiar sort of faint dimple on its surface (on the rare occasions when he did not overlook it altogether); but to the pilot that was an ITALICIZED passage; indeed, it was more than that, it was a legend of the largest capitals, with a string of shouting exclamation points at the end of it; for it meant that a wreck or a rock was buried there that could tear the life out of the strongest vessel that ever floated. It is the faintest and simplest expression the water ever makes, and the most hideous to a pilot's eye. In truth, the passenger who could not read this book saw nothing but all manner of pretty pictures in it painted by the sun and shaded by the clouds, whereas to the trained eye these were not pictures at all, but the grimmest and most dead-earnest of reading-matter.
Now when I had mastered the language of this water and had come to know every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition. But I had lost something, too. I had lost something which could never be restored to me while I lived. All the grace, the beauty, the poetry had gone out of the majestic river! I still keep in mind a certain wonderful sunset which I witnessed when steamboating was new to me. A broad expanse of the river was turned to blood; in the middle distance the red hue brightened into gold, through which a solitary log came floating, black and conspicuous; in one place a long, slanting mark lay sparkling upon the water; in another the surface was broken by boiling, tumbling rings, that were as many-tinted as an opal; where the ruddy flush was faintest, was a smooth spot that was covered with graceful circles and radiating lines, ever so delicately traced; the shore on our left was densely wooded, and the somber shadow that fell from this forest was broken in one place by a long, ruffled trail that shone like silver; and high above the forest wall a clean-stemmed dead tree waved a single leafy bough that glowed like a flame in the unobstructed splendor that was flowing from the sun. There were graceful curves, reflected images, woody heights, soft distances; and over the whole scene, far and near, the dissolving lights drifted steadily, enriching it, every passing moment, with new marvels of coloring.
I stood like one bewitched. I drank it in, in a speechless rapture. The world was new to me, and I had never seen anything like this at home. But as I have said, a day came when I began to cease from noting the glories and the charms which the moon and the sun and the twilight wrought upon the river's face; another day came when I ceased altogether to note them. Then, if that sunset scene had been repeated, I should have looked upon it without rapture, and should have commented upon it, inwardly, after this fashion: This sun means that we are going to have wind to-morrow; that floating log means that the river is rising, small thanks to it; that slanting mark on the water refers to a bluff reef which is going to kill somebody's steamboat one of these nights, if it keeps on stretching out like that; those tumbling 'boils' show a dissolving bar and a changing channel there; the lines and circles in the slick water over yonder are a warning that that troublesome place is shoaling up dangerously; that silver streak in the shadow of the forest is the 'break' from a new snag, and he has located himself in the very best place he could have found to fish for steamboats; that tall dead tree, with a single living branch, is not going to last long, and then how is a body ever going to get through this blind place at night without the friendly old landmark.
No, the romance and the beauty were all gone from the river. All the value any feature of it had for me now was the amount of usefulness it could furnish toward compassing the safe piloting of a steamboat.
I've always loved Albrecht Dürer's self-portrait, but not I think I'm may need to go back and study it a little more knowing more now about his technique. Thanks!
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