The Shadow Knows

Man, I loved the Shadow. Those days before the Tube took over the living room where just the radio waves and you struggled for justice, with a little help from Lamont Cranston. And it was not just because of Margot Lane!

The Shadow Knows and still does, shadows part of every artist's image and one of the things which makes or break the project you are creating

I may have mentioned that I am trying to relearn how to draw. I used to be fairly good, way back before the flood and all, before work and family took up all of my time and energy. Part of the way I am trying to relearn drawing is to practice on images which require a great deal of attention to light and shadow. The one I have been laboring over for the last few days in a high contrast nude.

You would think the strong shadows created by high contrast would be an artist's best friend whether boy or girl, but no, the damned things are just as difficult as any other part of creating an image!. And even though I am struggling and cursing and producing something which is a nude, but not at all like the one I wanted to do, watching the contours of the body plump up as I get the shadows in the right place is a delight. You can make a two dimensional image round.

No, I will not show you, not until it is finished and looking much more like a human being and a lot less like Rubens' sketch pad. But shadows will be a part of this and if it does turn out to be a human being and not a tellatubbie, it will be because of the shadows.



Okay I will show you, ‘cause I want you to take a look at the area around the chin. I couldn’t see that on the paper, but I knew I had the poor dear looking a lot like Kirk Douglas and to tell the whole truth Kirk Douglas doesn’t look all that good as a female impersonator, so I knew I had to shave a bit off her chin and with the power of a 7B pencil I did a Kirkectomy. And I was happy with the result, until I ran it through the scanner, then I could see that I had the area under her chin way to dark and way to isolated. Shadows fade they don’t end like a cartoon dog when he reaches the end of his chain. But at least I know what I have to correct and it won’t take that much, the dark spot does look natural there it just needs to be feathered into the rest of the shadows. So when I pull this out to work on, I know where to start.

No, of course I don't have to tell you how important shadows are, you are a serious artist and have been working with shadows all along and my discovery is old, old news.

See I spent fifty years working exclusively as a photographer and photographers are lucky and cursed all at the same time, they have to work with the shadows they get or wait for better ones to show up. They still need shadows to make their images round if they were round in the first place or square if they were square and that is why they wait for the right shadows.

Shadows in color? Right you are and they have to be there even if the work you are doing is pastel or colored pencil, oil, watercolor or Crayon. Potters and sculptures get a pass cause if their work isn't round to begin with shadows won't help much.

Here's a thought, take a picture. Yes, take a picture of what you are working on and run it through the computer. I find scanning in my images to be a really big help. See that scanner doesn’t know a flip about shadows. It records exactly what you have put down on paper. Even if it's wrong. Especially when its wrong and this is a humiliating process, but it is a very good one because it will see, unflinchingly what you have done as opposed to what you meant to do.

I haven't been at this art stuff very long, having come from Texas where art means pictures of cows and gents with six guns, Fredrick Remington is the Big Guy 'round those parts and sissy might like Andy Warhol or Jackson Pollack, but they's probably lavender any how. But having admitted to being new and all I also admit to wanting to get better. Now I know I can do that with a camera, I've been working on it for fifty years and if I'm not going to get any better I'd better quit. 'Sides with all of the painters lurking around here a photographer has to be sharp just to survive. But I don't know that I can do that with a pencil.

That's why I work at it, keeping a sketch pad with me all of the time and trying to do at least one drawing a week. That's why my nude will be finished and I will keep staring at those shadows and I will run the sketch through the scanner and take a look because it will see what I don't.

I have been writing longer that I have been taking pictures and I know one thing about writing, you need strict discipline to edit your own work. See when you reread something you have written, you read it right, not like it is actually written. Maybe that is what happens with an artist. They see their work the way it should have been painted instead of the way it is.

Are your shadows right? Does the work look rounded and right as the light plays across the subject? Are the colors properly shaded so that the shadows have the correct values? The Shadow Knows.