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Colour
I’m also, I hasten to add, a very talented artist. People come from far and wide to see my work, but you’re pretty much the second group to see my work. Thank you. I know it’s good, I know it’s good. But which is better?
This is by a guy called Stubbs, and this is Whistlejacket. If you could take one home with you… the real one, if it was hung up there, or mine, which would you take home? You’d take this one, would you? Not mine? You sure? Because I thought it was quite good. Right, okay. Why is that better than that? What is that? It’s a horse, isn’t it? You can tell it’s a horse. And this is a horse. So why is that any better than that? Yes. It’s got detail, that’s right. But what do you get out of that detail, what can you tell about this horse that you cannot tell about this horse here? Yes, it’s got not just a bushy tail, but look at its coat and its tail – it’s glossy isn’t it? I mean this is a magnificent horse isn’t it? This horse is powerful; can you see the muscles on it? Can you see the muscles on mine? No, you can’t, can you, because I haven’t described them.
So you wouldn’t know whether this horse could run or not. Do you think this horse could win a race? You all say yes. You can tell so much from this horse. This is a racehorse painted three years after it won a race for 2000 guineas, which was obviously a lot of money. It was painted for the owner. It was painted to show off what a magnificent horse it is and he’s done a good job, yes? Done a little bit better than mine.
So, you can see how colour makes a good description, and that’s the same in writing. What I’m going to tell and show you is how to translate that. Adjectives, which are the descriptive words, are what count obviously in descriptive writing. So I want you to think of nouns as like lines. The line in a painting describes the fact that this is a horse. But what describes the horse in detail, gives you a sense of the horse, is actually the colour. So I want you to think of adjectives in writing as like colour in a painting. |
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