I was taking a shower and listening to the Apple spa playlist, as I do whenever I’m trying to destress from a long day, and I was thinking about tourmaline blue ocean waters rippling over wavy white sands. I then started thinking about how I would create that image in my mind with words and with paints. Painting and writing use very different vocabularies and grammar to render images for us. With my paints, I use composition and negative space to give my image shape. I use color to evoke a mood. I use values to separate planes and set up points of light and shadow on the page. I’m still learning this vocabulary, and I make elementary mistakes, I’m sure. Learning how to paint what I see, what I feel, what I imagine is a wonderful experience though, and quite different from writing.
I’m much more familiar with “painting” images with words. I have loved how words can create fantastical and beautiful imagery in my mind. To this day, I still remember the images conjured forth when I first read the following passage from A Little Princess:
"The Mermaids swam softly about in the crystal-green water, and dragged after them a fishing-net woven of deep-sea pearls," she said. "The Princess sat on the white rock and watched them." —A Little Princess, Frances Hodgsen Burnett
That sincere description from the seven-year-old Sara Crewe, told so simply and beautifully, painted a vivid picture of those mermaids and their pearl fishing nets in my mind. Burnett uses color words (“crystal-green water” and “white rock”) and tender adjectives like “softly” to paint this glowing undersea image for the reader.
Another passage that expressively paints a picture for me is this section of Wallace Stevens’s poem, “Sunday Morning”:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow; Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued Elations when the forest blooms; gusty Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights; —“Sunday Morning,” Wallace Stevens
The very words sound like the images they are evoking. The word “passion” sounds like rain falling in sheets to the ground. When you say the word, “Gusty,” you can feel wind rush past your lips. This is one of my very favorite passages of all poems ever, and I can see and almost feel the divinity he is describing because of how Stevens uses the power of words to paint his picture.
As for me, you can see my beginner mindset in my oil painting attempts. I’m still learning about color mixing and theory, as well as composition. Painting what I can clearly see in my mind’s eye doesn’t yet come easily to me. As for words, I recently submitted a short story meant for an audio podcast (fingers crossed that it will be accepted!). Thinking about writing where sound is of the utmost importance changed how I set about “painting” my picture. Here’s an excerpt:
It’s hot, and the wind is tickling the pine needles. Feels like a storm is heading in. I don’t want to get out, so I sit in my car for a moment, eyes closed. On days like this, when I’m alone and the wind is kicking up, sometimes I can hear screams, the kind that start from deep down in your gut. I can feel cold, bony hands gripping my shoulders tightly. The weight of those skeletal hands presses down on me so hard, I can’t breathe. I lean back in the seat and can almost hear someone whispering my name. When I open my eyes, there’s nothing there. Just the buzzing of the automatic garage light and the thump, thump, thump of moths against the front screen door. —Butterfly, Merlina McGovern
How about you? How do you approach creating images either with paint, ink, sound, or words?
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