My teacher always says, while walking back and forth evaluating our desperately needy paintings, “is there a sense of light and space?” for months she has been saying this. I am aware of shadows and light and always add these things into my art, but i add not because I truly understand. I have been oblivious to what she means by this, even while being able to replicate it frequently. Until it dawned on me. I was looking at my cat and decided to do a quick sketch of her in her bed next to the window. It was a quick simple sketch with almost zero details and it dawned on me, if i get the light areas in, it will give the correct and accurate space. and it did! i was able to capture the cat in the bed just by adding the light areas and the dark around the light. In fact i sort of left the light, it created the space i was looking for and the details were a side thing. It’s not the details that add interest, it’s not the details that make a painting , “good” its the light. If you have no light in your painting, you lose the audience, you lose the image it becomes muddy and uninteresting, it doesn’t make sense, where are the lines where does one thing end where is the “space”? Now i realize, that is exactly what is so appealing to me about everything that catches my eye, its the light. If I can understand the light I can find what is interesting about a picture and I can understand what makes a painting, even a not so great painting, actually quite riveting, if the light is right. Its funny that on occasion i was able to capture this idea in my paintings because i would draw or paint what i saw and that meant transferring the light to my painting but i didn’t understand what i was doing. and had a difficult time with still life or plein air painting. We are good at copying but it takes understanding to bring life to the images we want to recreate.

Every Light has a shape. Every shadow has a shape. when you get the light right everything else works in a painting and drawing.

Jesus said He is the light of the world. I’m Thinking about getting the light right, I’m thinking about light as creating space in my life. I’m Thinking about light as being the thing that creates interest and appeal and draws people in. The bible says Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven and all these things will be added to me. What makes my life so interesting to others? what repels them? When we get Jesus “right” in our lives everything else just works. It doesn’t have to be the Mona Lisa, it can be an average life or an average circumstance, or an average piece of artwork, but people want to keep looking at it and they don’t know why. It works because Jesus is there in accurate proportions. The very first thing that God created was light. As the greatest artist ever, that was His first choice, He got the light in there to give space and meaning and life to everything else. He oriented the whole picture to the light. We cannot underestimate light in our artwork, neither in our spiritual lives. How often we think because we are parroting what we have been taught we understand what we are doing? How often do we have a wrong understanding of Christ and therefore nothing seems to “work”? He is the Light get him into your life and it will be radiant with beauty even while imperfect.

I’m just saying pay attention to the Light and your art will improve.