For Leonardo, the drapery studies helped foster one of the key components of his artistic genius: the ability to deploy light and shade in ways that would better produce the illusion of three-dimensional volume on the two-dimensional surface. . . . . .”The first intention of the painter,” Leonardo later wrote, “is to make a flat surface display a body as it modeled and separated from this plane, and he who surpasses others in this skill deserves mos praise. This accomplishment with which the science of painting is crowned, arises from light and shade, or we may say chiaroscuro.”
. . . . When mastering drapery drawings in Verrocchio’s studio, Leonardo also pioneered sfumato, the technique of blurring contours and edges. It is a way for artists to render objects as they appear to our eye rather than with sharp contours. . . .
The term ‘sfumato’ derives from the Italian word for “smoke”, or more precisely the dissipation and gradual vanishing of smoke into the air. “Your shadows and light should be blended without lines or borders in the manner of smoke losing itself in the air,” he wrote in a series of maxims for young painters.. . . . Page 41
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Dinesh said:
. . . . When mastering drapery drawings in Verrocchio’s studio, Leonardo also pioneered sfumato, the technique of blurring contours and edges. It is a way for artists to render objects as they appear to our eye rather than with sharp contours. . . .
The term ‘sfumato’ derives from the Italian word for “smoke”, or more precisely the dissipation and gradual vanishing of smoke into the air. “Your shadows and light should be blended without lines or borders in the manner of smoke losing itself in the air,” he wrote in a series of maxims for young painters.. . . . Page 41