Friday, January 13, 2012

Painting with words

A Picture is worth a thousand words ~ Fred R. Barnard
Honfleur, the painter of the old harbor.
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Have you ever heard that writing a book is like painting a picture?  Writers may have a different set of tools, but the process and end all hope is really almost the same.
  • Painters start by creating the picture - writers start by writing the rough draft
  • Painters change colors – writers chance view points, add analogies, and so on
  • Painters go back and add details – well, so do writers
  • Painters add a clear finish - writers polish their work by proofing their masterpiece and making sure it's ready for book shelves.
When we write, we are painting a picture with our words. We want our readers to be able to visualize what we are describing. Likewise, our painter friends want their pictures to tell a story. They want us to be able to look at their work and see more than just a painting. They want us to see the story that is unfolding within.

My grandpa was a painter. He would spend hours watching Bob Ross. When I was still very little he helped me make a couple of masterpieces. One was a clock that he showed me how to make out of an old saw blade, and the other was just a photo that you hung on the wall. I'm pretty sure that he did most of the work as I am not artistically inclined in that area, and they turned out really good. The painting still hangs on the wall of my moms home. While I may have been very young when those paintings were created, I will never forget the work that was put into them. They weren't created in a matter of minutes. It was a process. It took patience (which was very hard for me back then... but then again, my husband would say that it is still hard for me...) Picking the right colors reminds me of picking the right adjectives. The right brush, would be like using punctuation. When you change those things, it changes everything. The outcome is completely different. 
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