paintings vs. photos

[Hillman, Lee]

No: HPFGUIDX 30994

Hello, everyone!

I'm taking a much needed but don't-have-time-for-it break from thesis
writing to respond to topics I barely even remember reading about. Argh.
Well, it's almost over. Right? Then I can worry about HP more obsessively
than getting my draft in by the deadline.

Okay, here we go!

Joanne responded to a question about paintings with some neat discussion
material!

I myself came up against the portrait/photo theory when I was writing my
fanfic, because I needed to be in a place with portraits, but where a
portrait couldn't speak to ID my hero (who was a spy). Okay, you didn't need
to know that, but well...

The point is, I explored this question pretty carefully before venturing
into its territory. I came up with a lot of the same things Joanne and her
teens did.

Allow me to draw on the section that explains my theories. Non fanfic
readers, fret not, this has nothing to do with plots or any major changes in
conception of characters--merely background material.

"...The paintings at Hogwarts were somewhat rare. [In the latter half of the
19th century], a Belgian wizard named Cudaq developed the special solution
that exposed photographs with the ability to move, but paintings required a
much more complex effort. In order to move, a painting had to be prepared
using enchanted oils. The varnish could not be too thick, or it would fix
the pigments to the canvas and they would be squashed like butterflies under
glass. However, other than the worth of the painter's skills, paintings of
this type were not too expensive, as the paint formulae became rather
commonplace over years of design. 

"For a painting to speak, the picture was produced using brushes with
magical cores like wands, and extra spells applied as the painting dried, in
addition to the special oils. Such brushes were rather hard to find, and
only the best wizard-artists could afford them. Then too, the spells were
unreliable. There was no guarantee, for example, that a painting enchanted
to speak would observe any resemblance to the subject's speech. [There was
the] famous case of a Venetian lady, who in life was quite demure, but her
enchanted painting was downright loquacious. The artist...reversed the spell
and froze her in mid-sentence, leaving her mouth in a twisted mockery of a
smile.

"Far more complicated than either of these was a painting that could leave
its frame for another. In fact, ... Hogwarts [is] the only place ... with
many portraits who could leave their frames. ...The spells required to allow
them to maintain their form while off the canvas [are] too complex,
rendering the costs indescribable to the average wizard. Perhaps the amount
of magic at work at Hogwarts affected them all, as it prevented Muggle
technology from working perfectly. In any case, there were not too many
wizards around who seemed to want a painting powerful enough to leave its
frame."

Now, for those of you who want to point out that Harry and Dumbledore leave
their frames, and Penny Clearwater tries to hide her blotchy nose, I will
state that the "solution" used to develop photographs, which is of course
the one Colin Creevey learns about in CoS, allows them to leave the frame,
but NOT to jump into someone else's, which is of course the difference
between photos and paintings when it comes to movement. I think of it like
imaginary numbers, living behind the blackboard. The subject of a photograph
can leave the frame and hide, for example, between the print side and the
thick backing of the paper, but can't move to another photo in the album. I
suppose photo!Lockhart could perpetually chase photo!Harry around and around
the piece of film paper....

Anyway, there are some parallels. I quite like Joanne's theory that it might
matter if the wizard's dead, though it wouldn't have helped me out. And note
we both think it's important that the effort that goes into a painting makes
a difference.

Okay, I'm really losing my mind. Sigh. Back to proofread one more time. Due
in (checks watch) 45 minutes. Yikes!

Gwen