June 2007

I remember reading that some cultures don’t have a word for orange, preferring to identify orange as a yellow shade of red, or perhaps a red shade of yellow. I was reminded of this when reading this weeks New Scientist magazine (30 June 2007) which includes an interview with French linguist Annie Mollard-Desfour.

Among other gems of information Annie tells us that the Italians describe yellow egg yolks as rosso dell nova-tuorlo where rosso translates as red.

More controversially, a 1969 theory by anthropologist Brent Berlin and linguist Paul Kay propsed a theory that the more highly evolved your culture, the more words to describe colours your language would posses. Thus the simplest, most basic cultures have words only for ‘black and ‘white’. To me, this sounds like a suspiciously western-centric view. Presumably, the innuit, with 15 different words for snow, must look down on us in a similar way, for just having one.

You can read the New Scientist article here (subscription required).

Sunrise is an especially magical time of day with a special stillness and a quality of the light that is totally different from a sunset.

I’m in the final stages of painting a portrait commission at the moment. The portrait is a birthday suprise, so I don’t have the option to paint directly from the subject. Instead I’m using a selection of photographs. As I’ve never met the lady, painting her portrait is uniquely difficult because no matter how good the source photographs, I never know when (or if) I’ve achieved a true likeness. One other, related problem I’ve found is that some photographs can be very poor likenesses of the subject but that because ‘its a photograph’ people are much less questioning of the quality of the likeness. A photo can get away with a much poorer likeness than a portrait painter can. Why can a photo be a poor likeness? I think many of us unconsciously assume a certain pose for a camera, a pose that might not be a characteristic one. We can look formal, or hide bad teeth by not smiling. We perhaps straighten our posture or pull our stomachs in, raise our chin or force a smile. Add to all these problems external variables such as lighting, and its no wonder painting from a photo can be difficult.