Week 3

Goya and the Use of Light for Emphasis:

During our third week of class we examined some of Goya's Caprichos (two shown above). We spent a good deal of time during class looking into the use of light for emphasis and the movement of the light in a drawing to convey mood and manipulate how the observer looks at the piece. On all of these techniques, Goya is truly a master. 

The use of light and dark goes beyond shading, and expresses a mood of the figures in the pieces. Examples are the characters in the first Capricho and the beasts in the second. The moods and the intentions of the characters, in both examples are emphasized by their color and how dark they are in contrast to the rest of the piece. 

The use of light in the pieces also express the movement of the characters also brings the eye across the composition. In the first piece, we see the movement of the beautiful lady, as the eye is pulled across the page and drawn to the right side of the piece where it is the lightest. 

This piece was inspired by Goya's Caprichos, using like techniques with shading and the use of light to bring more emphasis out of the piece. I used light as an equivalent to "purity" in the piece and the black as the polar opposite. I'm not really sure what the main character is doing, but it was inspired by Capricho #43, and mimics the beasts above, with the faces of judging characters.

For this piece, I used basic shading and outlines to give my figure proportion and a basic look, working out early ideas before I started heavily shading. After the basic layout of my drawing I shaded and emphasized the feelings of the characters with unrealistically over shading. The background is dark or very light, specifically the table and document/art work is especially light, and the rest is dark to give a high contrast and bring the eye down the piece. The figure has white hair after his labors, under the judging eyes of the darker characters. I wanted to keep the head/hair as light as possible because the ideas of white, "pure," document is from his mind. I also like the contrast of the "pure" head and the characters body which I tried to model after one of Leonardo's Grotesques.