Some Lessons About Painting

The vision that takes you out of the patterns is the creation that transforms from feeling to representation.

The painter who wants to enjoy honor must indeed study the haste and natural gestures made by people without thought and springing from the depths of their feeling — mark them on their sketch-book, and then, in their own time, use them, placing a man in the same way, to see how his limbs look in such an attitude. That thing or that face will have the most distinct and precise features, which will be nearest to the eye.

For this painter, putting her hand behind the apprentice, she draws a head seen close up with contoured brushstrokes, also obtaining rough and cruel features, know that you are mistaken, at any distance you will draw this face, wherever it is found, he will have to be well finished, although by removal their contours are lost. So try to paint in such a way that a smoky outline appears rather than harsh and contrasting contours and profiles.

It can therefore be said: for that work that the eye can approach, all the parts of the painting are completed in their details with the greatest diligence. Apart from this, the first ones are finished by the contour, pressed and smooth, and the furthest sinews also finished, but by darker contours — that is, more indistinct or, less pressed: as regards the most distant parts, observe one by one what was said above, that is: the less visible contours, then the limbs, and finally all that is less distinct in face and color.

Do you want to know how the first painting was? Well, the first painting emerged from a feature that surrounded the shadow of the man cast by the sun on the walls.

Can the feeling that animates your vision materialize in an art totally different from the initial image where the art of abstraction dominates?

Leonardo Da Vinci was right when he wrote the lines above, specifying that what takes shape in a painting should not be distinguished as a protest against “distance”, and should not diminish the reciprocity of feelings between the artist and the viewer of the painting. So, the vision that the painting conveys must prove a certain detachment from other interpretations, a certain continuity from the previous moment captured in the image, so the painting must reproduce that depth of distance characteristic of a landscape or an out-of-the-ordinary portrait, something abstract in bolder colors.

On about that I have to mention something else. The balance between art and painting, especially between brushwork and impregnation, is important if we want to understand the painters’ vision from the perspective of those eyes that never sleep, because they are always dreaming of another reality. Now let’s assume that pictorial art, seen as an activity of the eyes to perceive contours, images, shapes, particularities of the body, is constituted as a kind of transformation of a figure into another figure, starting from feeling to representation.

In this case, we must take as a starting point the attitude of the man, especially his face or body, because the eyes betray the emotions of the man, while the body betrays the thoughts, the essence of the desires of its owner. In a large number in the same painting, light colors make facial expression (through mimicry and the shape of facial features) convey positive moods, while dark colors convey authority, just as dark red makes you appear assertive or violent. On the other hand, in the painting, the human body presents the particularity of abandoning the immediate reference to man, which is highlighted in that of “man’s creation”.

The art of abstraction, which accompanies leadership throughout the development of the vision, involves processing the concrete and transforming it into a new product that reflects three properties of a chromatic sensation: chromatic tone, saturation and brightness.

I say this because, just like in art, leadership must unite three main elements: the ability to deduce a general meaning from a few particular strings, the ability to reduce an object or another to a few essential features of it or of the group from which it is part, and the attempt to move your gaze from the outer reality to a so-called inner reality that has never been outlined.

A Few Lessons About Painting I want you to remember. First of all, as Edgar Degas said, in painting you have to give the impression of truth by means of false means.

Then, the painting must contain and convey the tenderness and emotion of positive feelings and must be “read” from left to right, not just from right to left, like a kind of diary, a kind of perpetual invitation to reminisce, as a kind of experiment, a thought exercise, a stimulus and an attempt to turn thought into an event, a force with potential for transformation and change.

Don’t forget a valid leadership lesson in the field of art: by moving away, their “contours” are lost.

* Note: Leonardo Da Vinci - Treatise on painting, Meridiane Publishing House, 1971.