Wednesday, September 22, 2010

a couple scenes

         Here's a couple of scenes, lately I've given my own definitions to the words "detail" and "refinement". Refinement refers to finishing a surface of a form, giving it its material texture and lighting-its interesting if you think about planes, because every plane is an edge of a form, even if its facing you. You can take a few very basic forms in an image but refine their surfaces and you'll probably have a pretty solid image (I think this is what atmosphere/mood is about). Lots of great paintings actually don't have but a few basic forms in them (look at portraits!).
              I've always been confused by the word detail, but now to myself I've defined it as "smaller forms". I was always confused when I'd paint from life partially because we have crappy words that mean alot of things at once (like "detail"). From life I would paint and see a few objects and they'd look alright, but when I'd paint from my head and not visualize/think properly I would try to finish a picture by adding more "detail", but not by "refining" the basic surfaces. Refinement of the big basic forms/planes is really what finishes a picture/makes it look 'realistic'...
a strange ritual...
Now when we consider a surface there are two main things to think about- the material of the surface (permanent), and the light (fleeting). Both of these provide to what I call "surface movement". Go look at some surfaces and textures-there is a sort of direction to them isn't there? --(2d direction, I believe there is 3d movement of forms but thats another talk)-- I think movement is made up of two elements- "direction" and "change". How does the surface change as it goes in the direction of the grain? In the picture above, the weird altar looking thing turns whitish as you go up the direction of the surface grain, there is a change in every surface as you move across (or it moves, however you see it)... I like to think in movement, because it quantifies contrasts, it shows how one contrasting element "turns into" another across a plane.
doing up my bathroom like this

2 comments:

  1. Glad you started a blog. I always like reading your thoughts over at Sijun. Hope you ramble a lot more here. :)

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