[John de la Vega]

Thank you, Celeste, for posting very relevant questions, ideas and suggestions on such an important topic. I just read your thread tonight and it moves me to an immediate reply.

As I say often to my students, edges are the soul of a painting, edges are where the music plays - or does not play. As you say, there are many otherwise well executed works where 'the language of the edges' is totally absent, mostly, as you suggest, due to a lack of awareness of its importance and of the technical issues involved.

You very correctly emphasize the importance light plays on the perception and execution of edges. I'd like to add at least a couple of dimensions, namely the form itself, and perceptual dynamics.

The form of course is described differently depending upon how light hits it, but in general, the more rounded the form, the softer the edge. The sharper the turn of the form, the sharper the edge. Of course as in other aspects of painting, visual dynamics choices can change and contextualize the previous 'rule of thumb'. Essentially, edges are affected in their sharpness by the angle of the 'line' or 'curve' of the changing form itself and also by the speed at which our eyes are 'moved' or, if you wish, 'want to' be moved along the form. This is a complex subject, and i go into it in some depth at my workshops, especially the advanced portrait and figure workshop (hope you don't mind the plug here).

Our perception and the way our eyes move across the surface of the painting to create and re-create the image is crucial in shaping many of our choices, from color/value to design connections to, yes, edges. Attempting a sweeping generalization we can say that the eye will move faster or slower depending how the edge is modulated, not only in softness or sharpness, lost-and-found-kind of thing, but also in the 'straightness' or 'wavering' of the edges themselves. Big help, right? Well, we have to use our visual judgment on this one, the individual instance very much dictating how the particular edge should be treated.

These concepts apply from large to small areas, from serious canvas real estate to a mere square inch, differently, of course, because our perceptual resolution varies depending upon size and other factors, external (room light) and internal to the painting, such as color intensity, contrast, etc.

It also helps to keep in mind that there are edges absolutely everywhere, not just along 'contours', separations of hair/flesh, figure/background, material to different material, etc. There are edges between brushstroke and brushstroke, value to value, dab of color to dab of color that seriously affect the quality of our act of perception, ergo the quality of the experience of the work, ergo, in my opinion, the very quality of the work itself.

We have only scratched the surface on this most fascinating of painting issues, I hope other contributions keep augmenting our understanding of this topic, the all-present, all-important edges.

Happy painting,
John