“Push the dark, by using your 6B pencil.” This would be my drawing advice to students working on creating an area of light in a drawing. How can white look white on white paper? You need some dark around it. This concept is known in the art world at chiaroscuro. If you want to draw folds in fabric you must notice the dark undercut and how it will make the top part of the fold look round and shiny. This is easier said than done, and requires strong powers of observation and a willingness to be daring, to get really dark.

I had this student named Marquis and his drawing skills were solid, but he was unwilling to use dark shadows to create a full range of values, so the result was a gray, monotone drawing without any strong contrast. He’d ask for feedback and in over 1 million different ways I would suggest he try making the dark areas really dark… almost black. I’d come back to find almost the same drawing I had left at the beginning of class. I’d say something encouraging like, “almost there, just more pressure with your pencil”, when what I really wanted to say was “that hasn’t changed at all.” But as luck would have it, his classmate Samuel turned to him and said, “ Did you not hear her? Make it fucking darker.” The joys of high school are many.

On a recent visit to the Greek sculpture gallery in the Art Institute I was stopped dead in my tracks by a scene that gave me such pause. A large, burly man, wearing a sports sweatshirt and knit hat with the team logo thickly embroidered over his forehead was intently looking into a clear case that holds the delicate bust of “A Young Girl”, a Hellenic sculpture that sweetly gazes back with unseeing eyes and a crown of graceful, soft curls on her head. Her hairstyle and dainty features are patterned on the notion of virtue and beauty. What could I do?  Oh for a camera to capture this moment, but it would be gone or ruined by my intrusion. So I slipped behind a case to take another peak at this moment of contrast provided by the two figures. And why would I think a large sports fan would not appreciate the beauty of the girl within the glass case? Was this an example of what Greek philosopher Heraclitus calls the Unity of Opposites, that things aren’t always just black and white, but that opposites can exist within us and that we can posses seemingly incompatible properties at the same time. It was my own narrow view that had left out this lovely possibility.

The cool white marble was serene and still and when the viewer had moved on I went back for a closer look. What did he see that caused him to gaze for several long minutes? I too, came face to face with “A Young Girl”, looking, searching, and hoping that I would also become as transfixed as the previous observer. And lo and behold I found that as I searched her physiognomy that there was no magical moment, clue or answer.   It slowly dawned on me that thanks to this scene of counterparts I went back, I looked again, I reconsidered and it was lucky for me that what had appeared to be visual opposites might not have been so different at all.