SHAPES

Today we are going to talk about Shapes, In painting, shapes is one of the different tools we use. When we talk shapes, we will be thinking of many different kind of shapes. positive shapes , negative shapes , beautiful shapes and ugly shapes as well as geometrical shapes and abstract shapes.
When we look at a subject with the intention to paint it, we can look to the outline of it , or we can look at it as an accumulation of many different shapes. If we look at it as the accumulation of many shapes, we will find that is easier to bring the likeness of the subject into the painting.
we all have different shapes from each other, in fact, if we look to a small photograph with a lot of people, a family photo, or a school photo and we can recognize all of them , even if their faces are tiny. We can do that because we recognize the shape of each individual.
Having this clear, if we are going to do a portrait, we should study the shapes of the person we are going to portrait and this will bring us closer to the likeness of such person. Caricaturist have very clear this concept or tool . since they have to bring a distorted likeness of the person.
If we take as an example the head of a person , here we have five distinctive shapes , one big, the head, an four small, the two eyes , the nose and the mouth . The distance and position between them will give us the right resemblance .
We will talk another time about the different kind of shapes( positive, negative, good and bad )that we have to acknowledge for painting.