Highlight of the Day!

  In every art class that I ever took (and it has been eons since I have), the instructor always stressed shading and highlighting.  It was drilled into my head that if you wanted a painting to look nice, you needed to use both.  Both techniques would accentuate the one thing that you wanted to feature as the focal point of the picture.  Okey dokey.  I am good with that as far as instructions go but, also as most folks will tell you, I have a hard time following "rules" when it comes to things like that.  My oldest son explained it to me one time as we were watching a line of ants traveling from their food source to their nest.  (This was right after he had joined the military.)  "You see, Mom, I am going to be like these ants. I will follow orders and stay in the straight line.  Ants are so organized."  As we were talking, a single ant came scurrying willy-nilly around the rest.  This ant was making circles and loops.  It was going up blades of grass and then retracing its steps.  We sat and pondered that single ant until he looked at me and said, "That, Mom, is you.  You are the one ant that marches or scurries to the beat of a different drummer. You are always out of step, out of sync and always a little bit weird."  While most mothers might have been a bit miffed, I sat there thinking how right he was!  He nailed it!  

  The weather, of late, pretty much keeps the sky covered in clouds.  It was those clouds that brought back memories of both the art classes and of the conversation with my son.  First, the offbeat side in me found beauty in a dead pine tree.  Not that the thing ranks any better than other trees, it just happens to have a bit of odd appeal to it.  I like that.  Today, the Master Artist was following all the rules of art class when He decided to highlight the old tree.  Set against the dark clouds, the tree would have been difficult to see, much less photograph, but with the help of highlighting and shadows, the tree stood out with flare!  A break in the clouds perfectly outlined the old tree.  This made the beauty of the dead tree even more intense. The tree's one gnarled branch reached out as if it was trying to shoo away the threatening clouds.  (That, in itself, was ironic as it was a similar storm that took out the tree in the first place.  One strong bolt of lightning killed the tree several years ago.)

  While I never learned to follow the rules pertaining to art, I did recognize the method behind the madness.  A simple thing like a break in the clouds did wonders to accentuate the beauty of the old tree.  It goes to prove that while some of us know the way, we do not always follow the same path to get to the end results.  And that is ok. It takes all sorts of folks to make this world an interesting place.