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Daily Painting, Aaargh! Foreshortening

by cooper on 9/26/2008 3:12:20 PMComment on this

Greetings,

Today's daily paint was spread to the tune of "paint what you see, and not what you know". Foreshortening is such a lovely invention. For those of you unfamiliar with the word "foreshortening", it's kind of an optical illusion. You know the guy's leg is longer than that, but when it's projecting toward you, you don't get to see all of it, so it appears shorter. Therefore, every painter needs to equip her/himself with the phrase "paint what you see, not what you know". If you've never tried it, I am here to tell you: it's way easier said than done!

The real question is: why can't people just stand in a straight row all the time? Do they know how much easier they would be to paint??? But nooooo, this group of Boulder musicians are all sitting down, in slouchy positions, all sideways to my trusty HP camera. I suppose I could take my artistic license and put them all in more congenial (to the brush) positions, but that would undoubtedly eliminate the story I am trying to tell with this thing!

So this is an acrylic painting, on a canvas that measures 30 x 40 inches. Maybe you can start to see the attitudes happening? That red blob front and center will hopefully some day become a hound dog. That kind-of-person in red, right above the hound is holding a washboard, and beating it with a spoon. He had excellent rhythm :) There was also a banjo involved in this music. We'll see if it can appear over the weekend.

Later, Cooper

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