Paintings convey a feeling, tell a story, make a statement, or capture a fleeting moment. A successful painting communicates with a language all its own. In many ways, it is a language of contrast and harmony. Do you want something brightly highlighted? Use a technique mastered in the Renaissance called chiaroscuro (/kyärsk(y)oor/) by painting an adjacent dark stroke to make it pop. Do you want to convey distance? Use aerial perspective  - the blending of cooler colors for the distance with warmer colors in the foreground. Do you wish to show the effect of a figure receding to the background? Try foreshortening.

In this book, I am attempting to reveal a little bit about my exploration of these techniques. The images preceding a finished painting in these pages illustrate, step-by-step, my path to practicing these techniques, sometimes, successfully, sometimes leading down another path of discovery.  

Please enjoy this journey with me.

Steve Burdick

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