The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: thing as drawing. Do not laugh, young man; no matter how strange that
saying seems to you, you will understand the reasons for it one of
these days. A line is a means by which man explains to himself the
effect of light upon a given object; but there is no such thing as a
line in nature, where all things are rounded and full. It is only in
modelling that we really draw,--in other words, that we detach things
from their surroundings and put them in their due relief. The proper
distribution of light can alone reveal the whole body. For this reason
I do not sharply define lineaments; I diffuse about their outline a
haze of warm, light half-tints, so that I defy any one to place a
finger on the exact spot where the parts join the groundwork of the
|