Harry Potter Artistic License

[loki-l]

A lot of fics have been written based on the idea of dead people living on as wizarding portraits, but I don't think too much thought has been given to how they work.

Were Sir Cadogan and the Fat Lady real people? Are all the animated picture in Hogwarts based on real people and real scenes that looked exactly like that, or are some merely figments of some artist's imagination? Do wizarding portrait painters put their subject in a god light making them look better or perhaps younger than they do in reality? How realistic would a portrait have to be to work? What about modern art or caricatures. Would changing how you depict someone change how their picture acts?

A possibly story idea for this might be giving Lilly Evans an artistic talent. Young Harry might discover a stash of her works in the attic at some point. He would find sketches and doodles from a young girls hat gradually as she got older turned more sophisticated and eventually as she learned the necessary magic got animated. Harry talks with the subjects of the wizarding pictures and learns from them without realizing that the pictures were not always true to live.

Lilly took some artistic license when drawing the people around her. Harry grows up with limited but extremely skewed knowledge of the wizarding world. He is in for a surprise when he finally goes to Hogwarts and so is the wizarding world.

 

[Prince Charon]

Interesting concept, that. Would he learn any spells, potions, or other magic from them?

 

[loki-l]

Interesting concept, that. Would he learn any spells, potions, or other magic from them?

Lilly probably would not have intended to create a magical homeschoolling kit or even an illustrated version of her class notes. She might just have been painting things that caught her interest. Any information on magic included would be incomplete and heavily skewed by a teenage girls priorities.

Harry would know that magic is somehow real and perhaps some bits and pieces of the stuff Lilly learned at school, but be completely ignorant of other things.

One possible subject that he might know a lot about could be potions. Perhaps Lilly even sketched her study partner in that class before they had their falling out. Wouldn't that seriously crimp Snape's style if Harry had received tutoring by a younger version of himself?

Other possibly subject might be her roommates who could give Harry a lot of information on girl-stuff that he has absolutely no use for. Pictures of the Maurauders might be a bad influence on Harry especially if they are from their more immature period. I doubt she would have gone to the trouble and drawn anything that could provide Harry much insight into stuff like history, runes, astronomy etc.

Seeing different versions of his father, starting as an annoying brat and transitioning into some dreaming prince charming might seriously confuse the boy, especially if the portraits character is mostly based on how the artists saw them. When she saw the good in Severus he was a nice and helpful boy and when she saw James as a potential boyfriend she also might have overidealized him somewhat.

The picture Harry builds in his mind of the wizarding world would be radicaly different from the one he eventually encounters...

 

[zeebee1]

That's life.

 

[Stephen Mann]

Your idea reminds me of a book by Aaron Allston, <a href='http://www.amazon.com/Galatea-2-D-Allston/dp/0671721828/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1286866212&sr=8-3' target='_blank' rel='nofollow'>Galatea in 2-D</a>. The main idea of the story is an artist who develops the ability to pull the subject of his art out of the page and make it real. Or, he can enter his art, in effect making each painting a pocket dimension.