Painting hair.
This problem goes to the heart of painting and is better discussed with reference to the lesson called 'The Pearl'.
We all know what hair feels like, its texture, its color, its breaking strain, and its usefulness in keeping the sun off
our head. We can love it or hate it. We spit it out with disgust when it invades our mouth and admire it lustre and
beauty when it cascades the bare shoulders of a beautiful woman. All this has everything, and nothing, to do with
painting hair. As I keep pointing out the concept of something must be married with its scientific reality before
you can truly paint it.Before we open our tool box of painting techniques and deal with the problem of the hair let us recall the pearl as
it provides us with an example that explains the rules a painter uses to render convincing existence.Are the pearls real?Things only exist as they relate to other things. Without light (place the pearl in a dark room) the pearls will
cease to exist. The question is - without light does everything cease to exist? Does an ant need to be a
mathematician to know it walks on six legs? If it can only count to five does it mean it must walk with a limp?
For the painter the answer is yes. Like Einstein's famous equation light is everything to the artist, the great
unifying constant.In the lesson on the pearl, by beginning with the room, the window, the table, and the observer I first created an
environment (for variation I selected objects with both curves and straight lines). It is always useful to create the
environment first. - either in the imagination or by physical positioning. Since it is semi-reflective the manner the
pearl interacts with this environment becomes the 'reality' of the pearl. The painter lives his or her life by
investigating relationships between objects under the influence of light. The painter's job is the discovery of the
general rules and their employment in creating an imagined reality - that is the joy for the boundries are endless.
But the mortal truth you ask? Who wants the truth? Let us sweep that off the table and crush it like a bug!
Dangerous stuff eh? No wonder artists sometimes lose their grip in reality!Mmm ... so to paint the hair we must create its environment?
There are really only four elements in this picture. The face, hair, background and the light. Unfortunately the
face is front lit which restricts any opportunity for secondary light effects or a nicely modulated turning point.
First I will slightly smooth the facial contours as they will otherwise compete to much with the hair and
background.http://www.geocities.com/~jlhagan/lessons/practicalapplication3.htm (2 of 4)1/13/2004 3:54:17 AM