From Wiki:

Diamonds sparkle because of their cut, not their flaws.

• The Role of the Cut: The cut of a diamond refers to the precise angles, proportions, and flat polished surfaces (called facets) created by a gem cutter. When a diamond is cut correctly, light enters through the top, bounces off internal walls like a mirror, and shoots back out to your eye. This creates brilliance (white light), fire (rainbow colors), and scintillation (flashes of light when the stone moves).

• The Role of Flaws (Clarity): Flaws—known as inclusions or blemishes—are natural imperfections inside or on the surface of a diamond. Instead of helping a diamond sparkle, large or cloudy flaws actually get in the way of light, making the stone look dull, cloudy, or lifeless.

• The Verdict: Even a completely flawless, rare diamond will look dull and glassy if it is cut poorly (too deep or too shallow) because the light will leak out of the bottom or sides. An expert cut is what unlocks a diamond's shine.

------

Sia: My Mum & Dad used to have a jewelry business. The cut all kinds of precious and semi-precious stones, including the occasional diamond. They taught me how to cut, drill, polish, and set stones into fine settings. It was quite laborious and exceedingly frustrating whenever mistakes were made on beautiful stones.I never got that good at cutting facets properly so I hire that process out or purchase finished stones instead.

The "ancient" cutting machinery is long gone now, having broken years back with no replacement parts available. I bought new polishing equipment over the years, so I'm good with that part.

Anyway, the cardinal rule with fine gemstones is to examine it thoroughly before cutting to ensure there are no inclusions (flaws) that may break or shatter a stone in the process.

Better to have a simple polished piece without proper facets than a cracked stone that could have been gorgeous if done properly.

Anyway, that's how I know for a fact that it is not the flaws that shine, but properly cut facets.

I think you may be mixing up materials. Mildly flawed items tend to be more interesting than perfect examples of the same item. It is the flaw that gives character. Not so with diamonds or other crystals.

Both have their pros and cons.

IMHO, realism is significantly more difficult and I very much appreciate the skill required. What I like most is when they make room for personal expression in their compositions rather than strict renditions of existing scenes.

Painting a realistic, perfect rendition of natural, outdoor scenes usually involves including some areas and features that are less appealing than your imagination could come up with. If you are commissioned to painting it to capture precisely what is there, we'll then do it exactly as is, warts and all.

However, if you are painting for pleasure, take the excellent bone structure of the scene and make it your own, keeping nice features, discarding others, and adding as desired.

The problem with realism is that it can lack lively interplay, feeling, and mood.

Impressionism can be incredibly lovely when it fully captures the essence of something rather than its perfect replication. Capturing how a scene feels, sounds, and even smells can be far more rewarding than a photographic replication without those things.

Boulders, trees, waterfalls, streams, mountains, clouds... are always good. I would make one little suggestion on this one, though. It needs another tiny bird or two just above the tree on the left side... IMO.

So I love to see truly excellent work by artists I admire or never heard of.

Share some of hers if you can?

in the foreground!

No matter the medium, it is pretty damn difficult to master painting realistic water and especially scattered light on the water. Most are too heavy handed and it all turns to mud, forcing the artist to scrape it all off and start over again!

Oil paint, by its very nature, is thick and opaque. So masterfully thinning it out enough to perfectly reflect light and the reflections of surrounding features on it while still keeping the background color shining through is truly incredible! To actually do it so well that it looks like a photograph, is that much more so.

That's not even taking into account mixing the right colors to capture the water. Most people paint water in shades of blue, but water isn't actually blue, it's clear just like clean water coming out of your faucet.

Open bodies of water reflect the sky, so appear to be various shades of blue or gray mixed with relections of puffy, white clouds and the sun, depending on the weather.

However, shady scenes with ponds, streams, brooks, or swampy water puddles surrounded by trees in various states of seasonal color or undress (chuckle) as in winter, will more often have brackish colored water (because of the earth beneath it showing through and less blue sky reflections). The water will show reflections of the surrounding trees, leaves, bushes, buildings, rocks, etc and the dappled sunlight peeking through the canopy of leaves.

The base color of water in shady, wooded spaces is probably the hardest to capture as a result, especially with oil paints. Add to that all of the reflections, shadows, and light dancing of of the water and you've got a real challenge to make it look real like a photograph.

Watercolors, while overall more difficult to master due to their unforgiving nature, are far easier to use to best represent scenes with water, particularly where water meets a sandy beach. That's because most watercolor paint is translucent and shows what is beneath it (which is also what makes it so unforgiving of mistakes).

Using staining watercolor pigments* for the base underneath the water, letting it fully dry, and THEN lightly glazing** over it with a thinned translucent paint works exceedingly well in capturing the elusive nature of water.

Unfortunately, oil paint cannot do that very easily because all pigments are heavy and opaque. It requires expertise in thinning mixed paint and applying the intended glaze very carefully over fully dried paint to avoid mixing rather than glazing.

Below applies only to watercolors.

*staining watercolor pigments like dark Alizarin Crimson or any of the Phalo colors:

• Pros: Excellent for rich glazing, building deep shadows, creating vibrant first washes, and layering without turning muddy.

• Cons: Difficult to fix mistakes or lift out highlights once the paint dries on the paper.


**glazing

refers to applying a thin, translucent layer of paint over a completely dry base coat. Because staining paints lock firmly into the surface fibers or substrate and resist lifting when wet, layering a translucent color over them allows the two colors to blend optically. Light passes through the top translucent layer, reflects off the staining layer below, and creates a luminous, deep, and multidimensional color effect.