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Example with Mary Pickford
Hi and thank you both for posting. I really enjoyed the explaination by John. Thank you so very much.
Here is an example of what I am talking about. This is a photo of the famous silent star, Mary Pickford. As I said previously, photographs will flatten both light and shadows so we are always starting with a flawed perception when we paint from photographs without using our knowledge of what would "really" happen.
In this picture the area on the lower right hand side of her face (the part of her jaw and neck that is in shadow)is almost as dark as the background. Correct? If this were true and someone painted the background a flat dark value such as navy, then this shadow would be painted almost as dark as the very dark almost black background color. Now, when in real life when posing models have you ever seen that shadow area "really" look as dark as black? or red black? It would not happen. The light from the shoulder would reflect enough light back onto the neck with the color added of course and you would see contours. The shadow on the jaw in that area would be a smoother transition from light to dark also. As I said the photo flattens and delineates and tends to make them look both darker and less fuzzy than they would appear in real life.
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