COMPOSE

Mathematics and Art

2012-01-27T16:47:00.000-05:00

I confess I surprised myself when I check out from our local library a video course on mathematics, but the title Joy of Thinking: The Beauty and Power of Classical Mathematical Ideas caught my attention. And I was totally intrigued with every lesson. To my delight, the course explores how math can be used as a tool to explore aesthetics and the mysteries of nature.

Some folks think it is not logical that artists could be fascinated by mathematics. Somewhere in the mix of professional mandates, artists are told that logic and art don’t mix, to use logic is to stifle creativity. Art is suppose to come altogether from the intuition, they say. Leave logic to the mathematicians. As a result of this kind of thinking, art and math get pigeon-holed as poles apart when, in fact, there is a lot of intuition in mathematics, and artists and architects have been depending upon mathematical proportions for centuries.

One obvious way artists use mathematical proportion is when we locate a rectangle’s "sweet spots" (eyes of the rectangle) for placing our centers of interest. We have discovered that those four areas midway a canvas' center and each of its corners are ideal spots for placing points of emphasis.

I've shown these with the green dots in the diagram below.

Qiang Huang has used the lower right "sweet spot" for placing the orange in his painting, "Out of Shadow."

Carolyn Anderson uses the same location for placing the hands in her painting, "Boy Reading."

I admit that if we artists had to do the math to come up with these "sweet spots," we'd refuse to deal with it, but the beauty of it is that hundred of years ago mathematicians figured out where these are: they discovered the Golden Rectangle on which the "sweet spots" are based.

Fibonacci who lived in the 1200's AD discovered a sequence of numbers that show the logic of the Golden Rectangle. It begins with 0 followed by 1 and here is where the sequence begins. The next number in the sequence, 1, is the results of the first two added together (0 + 1). That 1 is added to the first 1 to get 2, then the 2 is added to this 1 to get the next number 3. Then 3 is added back to the previous number (2) to equal 5, then 5+3=8, then 8+3=11 and on and on so that the sequence looks like this: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987, 1597, 2584 and on and on: there is no end to it. This sequence is exciting because it represents a ratio pattern that is found throughout nature, whether spirals in seashells, leaf arrangement on plants, scales of a pineapple, or all living cells. (For more on this, go HERE.)

Here's how it sets up the Golden Rectangle:

Slight disclaimer: the squares here are not exact, but illustrate the point.

The formation begins with 2 squares the same size (1 and 1 in the illustration above) . Add another square (2) whose edges are the same length as the combination of the first two together. Add a third square whose edges are the length of 2 + 1, a fourth whose edges are the length of 3 + 2, another whose edges are the same as 3 + 5 and on and on. This rectangle could continue until it circles the earth a zillion times. When built on this sequence, it is an infinite rectangle, the Golden Rectangle. Perhaps its perfection is in its infinitude.

I often wonder whether there is a strong relationship between intuition and infinity. Whether there is or not, it's all fun to think about. Perhaps logic and intuition are two sides of the same coin. But that's a discussion for another day. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoyed this little mental exercise.

Ditching Perspective Rules

2012-01-20T13:02:00.000-05:00

How much do you think about the rules of linear perspective when you draw or paint?

One-point, two-point, three-point—just establishing a horizon line and finding vanishing points can be such a chore that many artists find it too stifling to deal with. But there’s a way to find the correct angles of perspective for any object without having to memorize a single rule, and it’s something that artists have been using for centuries: the angle finder.

A brush handle, pencil, finger or even a stick can be turned into an angle finder. All it takes is holding your angle finder at arm’s length, closing one eye, and aligning it with the edge of the object you’re planning on drawing.

Locating the angle of the an oak tree trunk by using an brush handle as an angle finder.

Finding the angle is simple enough, but sometimes there’s a disconnect that occurs somewhere between reading the angle and translating it to a drawing or painting. Years ago I recognized this problem among a number of my college students. I discovered that when students were unsure about the tilt of an angle they were looking at, they could see it better if they could label it. (An odd thing, labeling: something we humans seem to need.) To enable an accurate labeling system, I came up with a method to teach angle finding by equating each angle to a number on a clock face.

It works like this: stand in front of a clock face holding yourangle finder at arm’s length. Position it so that it becomes like another handon the clock as if connected to the center. Looking with one eye closed, align the angle finder toward a number on the clock by rotating it either clockwise or counter clockwise to find 7 o’clock, then 9, 12 and 2. You have just read four perspective angles.

Now try this: Lay a book on a table, pick up a pencil to use as an angle finder, stand back three or four feet, hold the pencil on the eraser end, straighten your arm so your elbow won't bend, close one eye, then rotate your pencil until it aligns with the edge of the book's cover. Look at where the pencil is pointing, then name the angle according to its clock number. Try this again along the front edge of the book cover.

Keep your attention on the pencil so that it doesn't flop forward or point backwards. It must move only clockwise or counter clockwise, else it will mislead you.

The photo on the left shows the pencil pointing to a 10 o'clock angle while the one on the right points between 2 and 3. Labeling these angles according to where we find them on a clock can enable us to draw these angles, by-passing perspective rules .

Try doing a simple line drawing of the book, labeling the angle of each line like I've done in the drawing below.

Practicing the exercise several times can give you a idea of how the system works. After feeling secure, try the same exercise using a building as your image.

Just like any skill, the more you practice this the more adroit you’ll become at using it. Eventually you will have the clock positions firmly engraved in your memory and you’ll no longer need the clock diagram to help you out.

You will also discover that you’re recognizing angles in many more places, and that it’s much easier to draw them accurately—without ever being concerned about the actual rules of perspective again.

(Disclosure: this tutorial is an adaptation of a tutorial I wrote for Empty Easel in October, 2008.)

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See Dianne's latest work on One Artist's Journey

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Ten Thousand Hours

2012-01-13T19:33:00.000-05:00

We listen to music, we look at paintings. We play a musical instrument, we compose paintings. But what's behind it all?

Referring to the Compose tutorials of the past two weeks, Ann Feldman commented: "Malcolm Gladwell's book, Outliers...hypothesizes that mastery can only be accomplished after 10,000 hours of dedicated practice in any field, including art, music, and sports."

Ann continued, "Makes me think that an artist can only relax and allow the painting to be discovered after that artist has spent many hours learning the underlying techniques of art. Until an artist feels comfortable in his or her understanding, that relaxation is elusive! Do you agree?"

Gesture drawings by Rodney Grainger
following the Nicolaides approach

I cut my teeth on The Natural Way to Draw by Kimon Nicolaides. I did not realize as a young art student that Nicolaides' approach was the key that would unlocked my journey as an artist and as a teacher. Nicolaides emphasizes process over product, a concept I believe underlies all artistic success. So to answer Ann's question, I believe an emerging artist can become comfortable within every layer of the process. In Gladwell's hypothesis, I believe "practice" is the emphasis.

There is always a degree of awkwardness with anything new. But that awkwardness dissipates as we practice. With practice the newness wears off and what was once new now is familiar. And the more familiar it becomes, the more comfortable we become until it what was once new is now second nature.

Thinking about Sharon Isbin's mastery of guitar playing, I think back to when I was age nine taking my first guitar lesson. It was all new--how to hold the guitar, how to place my left fingers, how to use my right fingers, how to read the music score, and how to strike the strings. Add to this that those tiny young fingers were too tender and lacking in muscle dexterity to hold the strings tight to the guitar's neck. A year later, my fingertips were toughened, my finger muscles were toned, I held the guitar correctly without a thought, both right and left hands moved automatically and the score was like written words on a page. I could play "Danny Boy" without thinking. I was ready for my first recital.

Learning to paint is exactly the same process, just different materials. Perhaps the most important similarity in the two is that neither can be done without practice. But what does practice mean? Doctors practice, but they already have their degrees. (Even so, we hope they don't stop learning.)

Practice means to exercise and perform repeatedly to improve and/or maintain what one has gained. When we study techniques, we practice; when we're making a painting, we practice. When we do exercises, we practice. Practice is essential to the process no matter what we're doing.

Leonardo da Vinci practicing

Leonardo da Vinci practicing some more

Whether it's painting or guitar playing or figure skating, our practice undergirds the process that enables us to master new levels. Within each level once the awkwardness has given way to relaxation, we can discover. I don't think we have to wait until we've put in those 10,000 hours; I think the painting can be discovered at any level of competence. It's a matter of attending to the process rather than focusing on the end product, finding our comfort zone in each of those 10,000 hours, all along the way. If we do this, mastery after 10,000 is virtually a guarantee.

Bring Life Into A Still Life

2012-01-06T17:56:00.000-05:00

I've always thought the term "still life" a bit antithetical: what life has ever been still? But somewhere back in history, powers-that-be deemed still life a genre and left it up to future generations to define. Still life painting has a long history, going back as far as the tombs of ancient Egypt, proliferated in the Middle Ages and holds strong today as a genre. These days, any painting of a human-made arrangement of objects is called still life.

Left, Henri Masisse, 1912 Top right, Qiang Huang, 2010,
Bottom right, Roman wall painting, 70 a.d.

The question Judy Warner asked is how to add life into a still life composition. More specifically, Judy added "...how to add life so they don't look dead." It is true that some still life paintings carry with them a ho-hum feeling, but so do some landscapes and even some figure paintings. Is there something about the still life genre that puts it in danger of becoming a lifeless work?

I'm not convinced that any genre is more vulnerable than any other to resulting in a lifeless painting. But sometimes while setting up a still life, the artist can get a bit fussy during the process of arranging objects and that disposition gets transferred into the work itself, defeating the success of the painting before picking up the first brush.

I think Charles Reid is a prime example of an artist who brings life into his still life paintings.

Photo by Sandi Hester Still life demo by Charles Reid
Click on the image for a larger view.

Those of us who have watched Charles set up a still life know how nonchalant he goes about putting an arrangement together. Often the objects he chooses are randomly selected. But in the end, we see that he has placed a number of actors on a stage, an advantage given still life painting unique to its genre. No other genre offers the artist total control over the subject matter.

Charles then approaches the painting from a viewpoint of discovering and responding: rather than trying to copy the setup, he begins with a contour drawing to discover what he is looking at. Sometimes he will change the setup midstream--take something out, move something to a different place or add another piece.

Here's where begins something important to bringing life into a still life painting: the artist's attitude toward our process. When the intention is to discover what the eyes are looking at rather than that of trying to copy stuff, the artist stays alert during the process because we don't know what's going to happen. If, on the other hand, our attitude is one of trying to get it right or trying to force some preconceived notion, we run the risk of suffocating the work.

Charles Reid preliminary drawing for a painting different from examples above.
Photo by Mick Carney
Click on image for a larger view

Once his drawing is done, Reid approaches the painting like a kid in a candy store. He simply responds and keeps moving forward with confidence. He doesn't labor the piece. When asked whether he has a game plan, he always answers "No." He says he likes to approach the painting as if he's never done it before.

(During one of Charles' workshops, Mick Carney recorded the progress of his demo. Go HERE then cursor down a bit to see this progression.)

I think the difference between a tired-looking still life painting and one that's vibrant and full of life is a matter of the artist's attitude and confidence. Any painting that is labored over will most likely look tired and lack vibrancy. But when the artists moves forward, confident with a child-like approach of discovering what's there and responding with whatever degree of available skill, the end results has a better chance of having a life of its own.

I take issue with those who approach painting from a formulaic attitude. Keeping a painting fresh and alive is not a matter of following a set of rules--including intentionally trying to loosen up--nor is it slinging paint willy-nilly. Rather, bringing life into a painting comes from an inner attitude of wondering what one will discover next and allowing the painting to move forward within that intention. It is in the laboring over a painting that we steal from ourselves and consequently, the painting itself, freshness, spontaneity and wholeness that yield life.

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SHAMELESS PLUG

Check out Dianne's new book, In Praise of Mountain Waters: Paintings of Rivers, Waterfalls and Streams in Northeast Georgia. Available at Amazon.com

What Makes a Masterful Painting?

2011-12-31T06:58:00.000-05:00

There's an argument as old as painting itself, an argument I've heard hundreds of times defended from opposing points of view: What makes a masterful painting?

Ann Feldman, a portrait painter teaching at Mainstreet Art Centre near Chicago, asked me to talk about the subject. When I began putting my thoughts together, I realized how far-reaching a topic it is. This could go on for the length of a two-volume book.

As I write this, I'm listening to guitarist Sharon Isbin masterfully playing "Wild Mountain Thyme." It's a haunting yet simple little tune. I've heard it played so badly I wanted to scream, I've heard it rendered with such mediocrity I'd stop listening and I've heard it played with so much improvisation the tune itself became insignificant. But Sharon Isbin plays it masterfully.

What Isbin does with "Wild Mountain Thyme" on guitar is no different than what a master painter does with a brush, paint and canvas. My stance is that a masterful painting requires the same degree of skill, competence, authority and knowledge called for by an olympic figure skater, a concert violinist or a champion baseball player. A painting by artist Clyde Aspevig reflects the same degree of competence as a performance by figure skater Brian Boitano, violinist Itzhak Perlman or baseball player Chipper Jones.

Clyde Aspevig

Brian Boitano Itzhak Perlman Chipper Jones

But I am convinced that thousands develop competence, but few among them become masters. It's only when one can learn to relax within one's competence that real mastery emerges. Look at this masterful painting by Clyde Aspevig, then if you have time, look at these videos showing Brian Boitana and Itzhak Perlman each giving a masterful performance.

Clyde Aspevig OIl on canvas "Prairie Shadows"

Brian Boitano performing "Music of the Night:

Itzhak Perlman performing "Ronde des Lutins" by Bazzini

A masterful performance in any genre happens when verse becomes poetry, when scores become music, when form becomes discovery. It happens when the artist becomes so comfortable in the craft that he or she can move beyond technique into pure expression while fully utilizing the technique. It happens when the craft becomes the means, not the goal. Mastery can never come from an attitude of "look what I can do," rather from an intention of "where can I go next?"

Mastery is possible at any level during the process of developing one's craft. It's not something that happens at the end of one's development: one does not study for years, then become a master. That's not how it works. Mozart was composing at age five. Michelangelo created "Madonna of the Stairs" at age seventeen.

Michalangelo "Madonna of the Stairs" Marble Relief Circa 1491

But neither Mozart nor Michelangelo stopped learning. In fact, the more competent each became, the more each saw to be discovered within his chosen craft. And even though Mozart died young and Michelangelo lived into old age, at the end of each of their lives, neither felt he had done much beyond scratch the surface. That's the attitude of a master.

One characteristic I've observed in a number of masters is playfulness and an openness to all possibilities. Itzhak Perlman enjoys playing "Turkey In the Straw" with as much zest as he does a Chopin mazurka. Charles Schulz scribbled on envelops. Leonardo experimented with wax on "The Last Supper." There is a childlike humility that can find expression and joy within the most simple of subjects and there's an innocence from awe of the most honored.

Ann asked me the question: "What divides the truly great from the excellent?" I think it's the degree to which the artist is willing to let go. There's no question that mastery requires thousands of hours learning and developing the craft step-by-step, building one degree of skill on top of another, processing what one discovers, experimenting with possibilities, internalizing the principles that make it work, discarding the superfluous, refining and building on what does work, revisiting what didn't work before--all this and more. But I am convinced that within and during all these hours of involvement, it's the letting go that makes the difference. It's when the potential master totally relaxes within and allows it all to work together that the truly great can become manifest.

Mastery can happen at any moment when the artist, the craft and the instrument become one.

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Note: For a real treat watch

Sharon Isbin - Waltz by Agustin Barrios Mangore

And HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Celebrate Peace and Happiness

2011-12-24T06:13:00.000-05:00

I wish for each of you happiness and peace during a season when our western culture has set aside a time to honor peace among all people everywhere. Whether you are celebrating Christmas or Hanukkah or whether your beliefs are somewhere else, who can argue that Peace on Earth is the most desirable of all those things we wish for.

Note: Because I'm giving myself some time off to celebrate Christmas with my family, the "size" discussion I promised last week will appear early in the New Year.

The Importance of a Painting's Format

2011-12-10T19:17:00.001-05:00

We design of our paintings and drawings in concert with the support on which we create them. The edges of that support's shape are where the art work begins. In fact, if we're working with either a square or rectangle, the first mark we make is actually the fifth: the edges themselves give us the first four marks before we even pick up a brush.

With a square support the art work begins with four lines of equal length. With a rectangle we still have four established lines, but two of them are proportioned longer than the other two. A rectangle might be slight to stretched. It can be oriented vertically or horizontally. These choices will determine both how the subject is composed and how the content is communicated.

But what if our choice is a round or oval support? In that case we have one continuous line with which to begin within the support's edge. The first mark we make with the brush will be the budding painting's second line.

Within all these choices, we can make a painting any size from a tiny miniature to a huge mural. This choice, more than most others, will determine our intimacy with the painting and how and where it will be hung. But that will be the subject of next week's tutorial. For this one, I want to focus on the shape and proportion of a painting's support.

SHAPE AND PROPORTION

When I speak of a shape here, I'm referring to whether a support's edge has four sides or whether it is curvilinear. By proportion, I'm referring to the comparative length of the edges.

Both shape and proportion play at least three major roles: (1)They influence the placement of the subject, (2) They effect the function of negative shapes to express the content, and (3) They help determine how the spirit of the content is conveyed.

A round or oval shape softens our presentation. Its continuous edge circling around the subject neutralizes the tension and brings a gentle focus to the content. In contrast, a square support with its equal sized edges gives equal emphasis to horizontal and vertical directions. But the orientation and proportion of the rectangle can reinforce the import of the theme by either repeating or contrasting its direction.

Andrew Wyeth used a double rectangle for his painting, "Spring." The placement of his theme is enhanced by the exaggerated horizontal direction of the support.

Andrew Wyeth "Spring" 24" x 48" Tempera on panel

But in his painting, "Faraway", he uses the proportion and orientation in a different way.

Andrew Wyeth "Faraway" 13 3/4" x 21 1/2" Drybrush on paper

Here his title gives it away: the negative spaces on either side of the boy, extending the width of the painting, impart a feeling of a vast and empty landscape in which Wyeth's son sits in his own "faraway" world.

However, in this early self-portrait, Wyeth's vertical support heightens the content by repeating the vertical position of the subject. We feel the height from the subject's placement close to top and extending beyond the bottom edges, but the width translates into the hallway's distance from the space between the person and the left edge--the negative space. This more traditional proportion of the support allows room for the negative space to express the place where the subject finds himself.

Andrew Wyeth "The Revenant" 29" x 21 1/2 " Tempera on panel

But in "Distant Thunder," he emphasizes the reclining subjects by contrasting them with a vertical support whose direction repeats the upward reach of the two trees.

Andrew Wyeth 48" x 30 1/2" "Distant Thunder"

I chose Andrew Wyeth's work because he was a master of using the direction and proportion of his support as a device for making us feel the spirit of his content. We can imagine that if "Distant Thunder" had been given a horizontal support, its impact would have been diminished. And so would that of "Faraway" had he chosen a square, a proportion the position of the boy might suggest. On the other hand, both "The Revenant" and "Spring" are strengthened by the subjects' position being emphasized with both the orientation and proportion of the support.

As to when during a painting's development the choice of format is made, it really doesn't matter. Sometimes a support will suggest the subject, at other times the subject will suggest the support. It all depends upon what the artist wants to do with the subject. In fact, the support's size, shape and/or proportion could come last of all: sometimes an artist will reshape a painting after it's finished. That, too, is a part of the painting process. What matters is how the support fits what the artist is trying to communicate.

We limit possibilities if we restrict ourselves to prevailing dogmas about the format of our paintings and drawings. A good landscape painting is not always horizontal; neither is a good portrait always vertical. Even though these are a safe bet, the artist can discover dramatic potential when allowing the painting's intent to determine how it is formatted.

Format is an important composing tools: its role in the placement of our subject, its role in forming negative shapes and it's potential for communicating the spirit of a painting's theme gives us an array of exciting options for a strong and inspiring work of art.

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Note: Thanks to Jim Kissel for asking me to address the size and format problem in composition. I enjoy hearing from those of you who read this blog and I welcome your requests for me to tackle any subject relating to how we compose our paintings and drawings. You can email me with your requests by clicking HERE.

The Question of Style

2011-12-09T15:53:00.000-05:00

A question asked most often by emerging artists is "How do I find my style?"

Style--that unique characteristic that links an artist to his or her work. Where does this characteristic come from? How is it that anybody familiar with Charles Reid or Jennifer McChristian or Carla O'Connor can recognize one of their paintings without seeing a signature?

Look at these three paintings, one by each of these three artists:

Charles Reid Watercolor

Jennifer McChristian Oil

Carla O'Conner Water media

Each is the same subject matter, the female figure. The art critic would describe in detail how each style is different from the other two and unique to the artist who did the painting, but I don't want to do that. You can see their differences for yourself, and if you go to their websites, you can see how each of their styles is uniquely expressed in these paintings. No, what I want to address is how artists acquire their styles.

The single thing Reid, McChristian and O'Connor have in common is that each of them knows how to paint: they know their craft. They have learned and matured their skills. They can paint without thinking about how to do it. So, before a style can fully emerge, an artist has to be so comfortable with drawing and painting that no conscious thought has to be given to the how-to of it.

Developing skills to this extent requires practice, lots of practice. And here is where artists lose the advantage enjoyed by musicians, actors, poets, and all other performers. That advantage is that the practice sessions are distinct from the performance. Evidence of the struggle gets left behind the scene.

Not so for painters: we have our practice pieces starring us in the face. And there's always somebody wanting to see what we've done, leaving us vulnerable to their comments. Nobody has to hear a musician's practice nor hear an actor's rehearsing nor watch an ice skater's workout, but once an artist has done a practice painting, it's there to be seen as if it's the final statement.

Because of this one thing, too many emerging artists think every piece must be a masterpiece. They are not given the leisure of practice pieces. In fact, too often their teachers neglect to remind them that class work is practice, not performance.

The irony of all this is that true style emerges and evolves during the act of doing. It cannot be contrived nor intentionally invented without being faked. In fact, if style is forced or invented intentionally or cloned from another artist, it cannot last because it has no where to go. I admit a slim possibility that an artist can evolve out of an induced style into his and her own uniqueness, but there's a danger of getting stuck only to reach a dead end.

It is safer and less stressful to just allow syle to happen within the act of doing. While skills are being developed, the artist's uniqueness can emerge if it is allowed to. In fact, developing your own style is the easiest part of becoming an artist. You don't have to try to do anything at all beyond adjusting your attitude about it. Allow yourself the leisure of practice. Lots and lots of practice. Learn your craft and the style will follow.

Style is nothing more than the artist's natural response within and to the entire process of painting.

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Note: The idea for this tutorial came while listening to Robert Genn being interviewed by Leslie Saeta and Dreama Tolle Perry on their blogcast, Artists Helping Artists. You can listen to Robert's interview by going HERE.

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If you have something you'd like me to address in these weekly tutorials, send me an email at dianne.mize@gmail.com and I'll be happy to give it my best shot.

The Color Debate

2011-11-30T08:59:00.001-05:00

Of all the composition elements we work with, color fascinates yet baffles students of art more than any of the others. And I would go so far as to say that among those teaching painting, there is more dogma about color than about all the other visual elements combined.

In fact, I suspect the prevailing dogmatic teachings are largely responsible for the student artists' fear of color. My personal opinion is that we all should be wary of dogma. Any school of thought claiming to be the only way should be suspect.

It seems to me that the best way to understand color is to work with it and watch what happens. As a beginning, I offer here two ways master artists have learned to work with color:

1. Experience making color:

Begin with one color and a white and explore four possible changes that white can make to the color, in sequence from dark to light. Here's an example of what can happen to alizarin crimson.

Pure alizarin crimson followed by small additions of white

If you do this little exercise with all your favorite tube colors, you will experience working with color and through that experience, you will obtained a working knowledge. And you can gain additional experience by changing the initial color with another color, then by making another sequence with white. Here's what happens to alizarin crimson when a tad of ultramarine blue is added.

You can take this little experiencing exercise as far as you like. There are no rules and no limits to what you can discover.

Master artist Richard Schmid has used this method for exploring color for decades. He outlines how he goes about it in his book, Alla Prima. The book is a bit on the expensive side, but for any artist wanting to experience color, I recommend it above any I've seen.

Richard Schmid "Orange and Violet Pansies" 12" x 20" Oil on Linen

2. Experience seeing color.

Pit off the mixing experience to a seeing experience. A good way to really see a color is to compare it with another color. Try this by looking at single object, such as a red apple--since we began this with alizarin crimson. Place the apple a couple of feet in front of your eyes, then paint a swatch of pure alizarin on the edge of a small piece of paper. Hold your swatch at arms length in front of the apple, close one eye and study the comparison.

Choose one small area of the apple at a time and hold the swatch slightly in front of it, starring at both for a few seconds. Then let your eyes move back and forth between the swatch of color and the apple. Is that part of the apple lighter than the swatch or darker? Warmer or cooler? The same hue or a different hue?

Take this exercise a step further by placing the apple in a shadowed place, then making a new set of comparisons.

Putting It All Together
Two things participate together to create the color we see: light and the mechanics of our eyes.

But learning to recognize the color our eyes see is a skill, not a guessing game. Athletes and musicians go through prescribed drills in order to build their performance skills. Each drill provides an experience that informs the body and mind so that performance has a better chance of being great. As skills are built, theory and knowledge becomes meaningful. The same is true for artists.

But I suggest that dogma will close your universe rather than open it. While there are a lot of valuable insights within each of the schools that claim to have the goods on color, artists will do well not to get swept away by a single school of thought; rather, to continue to explore and experience what works for their own sensibilities.

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The Power of Direction

2011-11-23T08:18:00.001-05:00

For ages, artists have been using directional movement to compose their paintings. Directional movement is any visual movement in an art work created by a line or by the alignment of shapes or color or value contrast.

The classic is the triangle on which artists depend for giving both balance and dynamics to their work. From before Rembrandt to after Norman Rockwell, today's art collections are filled with paintings whose compositional structure is some variation of this directional movement scheme.

"Storm on the Sea of Galilee" Rembrandt van Rijn
1633

In this Rembrandt painting, the upper diagonal of the triangle is created by line, but the lower two are created by the alignment of shapes.

"Fishing" Norman Rockwell 1971

In this Norman Rockwell painting, the lower side of the triangle is created by line with the other two sides being created by the alignment of shapes.

There is a variation on the scheme that is also found in this Rockwell piece.

Opposing diagonals that counter balance each other

There are opposing diagonals and accompanying verticals and horizontals.

Vertical and horizontal that give stability.

Because a single diagonal movement feels unstable, like when we are falling, some other movement is needed to give it balance. An opposing diagonal can do this, so can a strong horizontal or vertical or a combination of these. In Rockwell's piece we see all of these at work.

Look at these two paintings by John Burton.

"Changing Tide" Oil

"Dance of the Lupine" Oil

Two totally different subjects with the same directional movement.

Look at how the strong diagonals are balanced with both a horizontal and a vertical.

It works in all genre whether landscape, still life or portraiture. And the exciting thing is that the direction of light can be set up to reinforce one of the directions. Qiang Huang is masterful at doing this.

"Still and Alive" Oil

Here's the theoretical explanation of how it works: Both the horizontal and vertical direction give visual stability. The horizontal serves to calm things down, to give a feeling of being at rest; the vertical gives anchor and a fulcrum for balance. A diagonal, though, gives energy and motion. That's why verticals and horizontals are often used to stabilize a piece containing many diagonals or other energetic elements.

It all goes back to nature, to our psychology and the physics of our bodies. When we are in a horizontal position we are at rest, in a vertical position we are anchored to the surface on which we are standing, but in a diagonal position without any support, we're most likely falling.

Once again we see how the principles of composition are live forces rather than baggage to be dealt with or ignored.

Play It Again, Sam

2011-11-16T18:21:00.001-05:00

What do these four designs all have in common?

We all know how unnerving it is to hear the same old tune over and over again. But when a musician adds variations to that tune, something that had become irritating can be transformed into something delightful. And the more clever the variations, the more likely we are to want to hear it again.

The advantage music has over painting is that we are more likely to continue to listen than we are to continue to look. If a painting doesn't capture our attention at first glace, chances are we'll look away from it, going onto something else. Often the reason for its failure to engage us longer is its lack of variation.

Have you found what the above designs all have in common? Did you guess repetition? If you did, you got it half right: repetition with variation is the answer.

There are abundant repetitions in nature, but nature's repeated elements contain variations and the artist's ability to capture and express, even exploit, those variations is one way to hold a viewer's attention.

Carolyn Anderson Oil

Color samples from the light values of Anderson's painting

In the above painting, Carolyn Anderson repeats the same color family throughout a large part of the painting, but within that color, the way she finds to vary their hue, intensity and value keeps us interested. In addition, she varies the direction of her brushstrokes, the degree of blending, and the edges of the shapes.

Look at the variations in color Kevin MacPherson has put into the sky and water of "Shem Creek Afternoon."

MacPherson "Shem Creek Afternoon" 12" x 16" Oil

Color samples from MacPherson's sky

Color samples from MacPherson's water

In both sky and water, there are repetitions that could be translated into ho-hum interpretations, but MacPherson has looked more closely and found differences that keep these areas compelling. And on closer observation we can see that he's repeated the kind of stroke he uses for the water while varying it's width, length and occasionally its direction.

But possibilities extend further than nature. Even though the color of human flesh is repeated throughout one's face, Carol Marine has discovered at least six variations in color just on the light side of this humorous portrait.

"One-eyed Don" Oil Carol Marine
with samples from the right side of the face.

By varying the size and direction of her strokes as well as the colors, Carol has made an otherwise common subject exciting and fun to look at.

Repetition is the composition principle that produces rhythm and can give unity to a work, whether music or any of the other arts. But too much repetition without some variation can render boredom. Nobody wants their work to be boring. Do they?

A Visual Challenge

2011-11-10T12:59:00.002-05:00

What do these paintings have in common?

Karen Jurick

Clyde Aspevig

Richard Schmid

Jennifer McChristian

Colin Page

Edward Hopper

Every single composition principle and composing scheme in existence is derived from either patterns in nature, from laws of physics or from how our eyes work.

The beauty of past artists' having discovered and verbalized these principles is that today we can study them and learn how to use them in a brief time, especially compared to the centuries it has taken to understand and explain them. More exciting than that is how each of them can be utilized in so many ways, many of those still being discovered today.

So have you found what the paintings above have in common?

The answer is converging lines.

This composing scheme is in essence one-point perspective. Italian Renaissance architect Filippo Brunelleschi is credited with discovering that when we're looking at parallel lines, our eyes make those lines converge to a single vanishing point. What's amazing is that this scientific fact is also an artistic principle.

By exercising this principle onto a two-dimensional surface, we create the illusion of seeing into three-dimensional space.

Whether painting people or an interior or the outdoors, artists use this principle to add the dynamics of distance and movement in space.

Karen Jurick uses it in this painting to show the depth of a room and to show the distance between the couple on the right and the individual on the left. And the lines' converging outside the paintings gives us the sense that there is a continuation of something beyond the painting itself.

Clyde Aspevig shows a similar continuation beyond the painting with the same method.

Colin Page, Jennifer McChristian and Richard Schmid each use the covergence to keep the viewer inside the painting, each showing a different variation on where the lines come together, therefore each placing the viewer in a slightly different vantage point. Whether the vanishing point is place inside or outside the painting, we have the illusion of being in a three-dimensional space.

Like Aspevig and Jurick, Edward Hopper's lines converge outside the painting, He made a choice to place the viewer slightly to the left of the sitting man rather than peer directly at him head-on, giving a feeling of his sitting on a walkway that goes outside the painting.

Using converging lines gives both order and dynamics to a painting: order in that shapes are aligned rather than being randomly placed and dynamics in that converging lines keep the eye moving. Keeping this in mind, the artist need not be bothered with having to memorize rules of perspective.

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Note: My pre-Christmas auction of little paintings has now begun with two paintings.

You can bid on "After the Rain" HERE

and/or on "Downtown Tate City" HERE.

The Zen of Composing

2011-11-04T15:21:00.000-04:00

Don't let the noise of other's opinions

drown out your inner voice. - Steve Jobs

Composing is about making decisions, but decision-making need not be limited to intellectual choices. In fact, some of the best artistic decisions we make are intuitive. After all, it's within our intuition where we find our inner voice.

Our intellect plays an important role in our learning the mechanics of how composing works and we need that; otherwise, our work would suffer. In fact, those who would argue that learning composition principles is limiting are both misinformed and naive. But we are not unlike Olympic champions who learn their craft, but preform their best when they depend upon their intuitions to exercise that craft.

And it is within our intuition where we make discoveries. Our intellectual knowledge enables us to recognize, understand and communicate what we have discovered. And it enables us to grow out of ignorance, but without intuition there would be no such thing as creativity. There would be no scientific discoveries, no new inventions. I would argue that the finest art grows out of both working together in balance.

But we need to acknowledge that too often artists fall into a trap of blocking intuition when we have to make judgments. With our eyes tracking backwards while we're working, it's easy to deem what we have done inadequate. Artist-author Frederick Franck has what I think is an approach towards breaking through this potential trap.

Franck's Zen Seeing, Zen Drawing guides the artist past the self-critical phase into an attitude of mind where we respond to what we see without hanging ourselves up on whether we're getting it right. He guides the reader through simple exercises that when practiced daily becomes a journey of seeing rather than just looking at our subjects.

The value of being able to do this, as I see it, is the freedom we can gain from trying to make our work acceptable. We lose that tendency of judging ourselves inadequate and therefore grow more confidence--confidence in our painting skills, confidence in the way we use them in composing, but most important of all, confidence in allowing access to our inner voice.
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As as a sidebar: With this week's One Artist's Journey post, I'm introducing my new association with Daily PaintWorks, an on-line sales gallery and auction website owned and managed by David Marine, husband of artist Carol Marine. I'm excited about this new opportunity to make my paintings available for sale on a website of such integrity.

Very soon, I will be offering a pre-Christmas auction of small works.

And There Was Light

2011-10-28T20:18:00.000-04:00

Chiaroscuro. It's pronounced key-air-row-skew-row, but what does it mean?

Artists who exercise the chiaroscuro principle play with what happens when a unique light strikes an image. Parts of the image seem to leap forth into the light while others recede into shadow, like in this painting by Mary Whyte.

"Before There Were Wings" Watercolor Mary Whyte

This term itself came out of Italy and goes as far back as the early 1400's. The word literally means light-dark and most accurately describes how a particular light-and-shadow influences the way we see images.

So chiaroscuro relates specifically to illumination and how an artist translate it into a painting or drawing.

Chiaroscuro is as effective in a monochromatic (single color) painting as in one using multiple colors. This monochromatic 17th century painting by George de la Tour receives its illumination from a candle.

"St. Joseph" George de la Tour circa 1642

But this 21st century multi-colored still life by Qiang Huang receives illumination from a narrow light source outside the painting.

Qiang Huang Oil Demo
Click on image for larger view

Both are in chiaroscuro. In both it is the direction and strength of the light that give meaning to the content of the painting.

Our language is organic. Terms originate somewhere in time then their definitions evolve as we humans become conscious of their mechanics. Until the 21st century, art history authorities kept to a close-knit definition of chiaroscuro, limiting it to figurative and still life forms and a single light source. More modern understandings of the concept include the total interplay of light and shadow, no matter what the subject is.

Today we can say that Jennifer McChristian's "Marche aux Puces" is in chiaroscuro...

Marche aux Puces Oil Jennifer McChristian

...or that Pat Weaver's watercolor of a cow is in chiaroscura...

Watercolor Pat Weaver

...just as accurately as we can say that Rembrandt's "Man in a Golden Helmet" is in chiaroscuro.

"Man in a Golden Helmet" c. 1650 Rembrandt van Rijn

When I was a student in the sixties, chiaroscuro was on moth balls. It was an antiquated term associated with works of the past, delegated to the pages of stuffy art history books whose authors guarded its definition as if it were untouchable. Today, it is a vibrant tool capable of bringing life to a painting.

Sometimes we do well to jar from the annals their embedded notions and ask ourselves anew: what does this really mean?

Open and Closed

2011-10-21T16:48:00.000-04:00

Composing is not just about the design of the painting, nor is it just about the subject. Rather it is about choices: it is about how we select the subject, how much of it we select, then how we express our choice on the two-dimensional space we've chosen.

Sometimes painters choose to engage the viewer by giving a limited number of clues about their work's content, giving the piece a sense of mystery. One classic method for doing this is something called an open composition.

Whereas in a closed composition the entire subject appears within the edges of a painting, the open composition shows only part of the subject . In photographers language, the image is cropped.

Look at the photos below:

We know this is a person, but where is she? Outdoors or looking out an open window? What is she doing? Is she gazing out over a landscape? Is the wind blowing her hair? An open composition might crop out any degree of information allowing us, the viewers, to complete the story or simply ask questions.

Still an open composition, this selection and placement gives us more clues. Now we know she's on a bicycle, but is she riding or resting? Is she wearing shorts or slacks or a skirt? Is she making a turn or about to crash into a fence?

Here we have a little more information--we know she's wearing shorts, but we still don't see all the image. We still don't know whether she is riding or resting or about to crash. Her hair tells us motion is coming from somewhere, but is it from how she's moving or is it wind? The composition is still open.

But in this photo, the story is complete giving us a closed composition where the entire image is shown to us. The girl is riding her bike and about to make a turn from one trail onto another alongside a fence. About the only question left is whether the wind is blowing or whether she's making a speedy turn.

One thing we might note is that the closed composition doesn't engage us so much as the open compositions did. Making this selection for a painting will require making additional choices to keep our audience engaged.

Twentieth century artist Georgia O'Keeffe often used open composition, zooming into the center of things to find her subject. At first glance we see an abstract design, but looking closer we realize we are gazing into the center of a flower.

"Red Canna" Oil on Canvas Georgia O'Keefe 1887-1986

But twentieth-century artist Edward Hopper uses the device in another way. Is it to kinder our imaginations or for it's spatial design? Or perhaps he was teasing us.

"Light at Two Lights" Watercolor Edward Hopper 1882-1967

The visual language speaks to our senses, our intellects, our intuitions and our emotions. The use of open composition stands a good chance of strongly tapping into all four.

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See my most recent painting at One Artist's Journey. A new painting is posted each Sunday.

Light Has Temperature, Too

2011-10-14T22:23:00.000-04:00

Imagine someone strumming a guitar slightly out of tune. No matter how lovely the melody or how well it is played, if even one string is out of tune the rendition is bothersome. We get the same sensation when a painting's color temperature is “out of tune”.

The temperature of light--whether it is warm or cool--is the one element that keeps a painting "in tune," that gives the feeling of harmony. If the ambient light in a scene feels warm, then all the colors need some degree of warmth whereas if the light is cool, even colors we recognize as warm will be slightly cooler.

I'm including this color wheel as a reminder of the warm and cool colors when not effected by ambient light.

Notice the sense of overall warm light in this Richard Schmid painting. Even though they are cooler than the buildings, the grays of the street, sidewalk and sky contain some degree of warmth.

Richard Schmid Oil on Canvas

Now look at the overall cool light in this painting by Charles Reid.
.

Charles Reid Watercolor on Paper

Although we think of skin tones as being warm, when in cool light, they are perceived cooler, leaning more towards violet than orange. Even the yellows of the boat and distant building are cool yellows.

Here's a little experiment I did:

Below are four versions of a single scene, the original and three others each with a different light temperature. Using my photo editing software, I created varying light temperatures, then sampled three areas of each photo to see how the change in temperature effected the original colors.

For larger version, click on photo Original photo by Cathy Hauck

Each little box of color labeled A is taken from the large shadow on the grass. Those labeled B are taken from the woman's white shirt, and the C's are taken from the sunlight grass. Comparing these we can see how even the sunlit grass becomes a bit bluer under the blue light, a bit more olive in a magenta light, and a brighter, yellow green under the yellow light. And notice how even the hot red of the firetruck changes consistent with each new light temperature.

Taken individually, each of these versions is "in tune," giving the feeling that the same color of light is present within the entire scene.

The Role of Edges

2011-10-07T21:21:00.000-04:00

An edge in a painting is like a pause between two musical phrases: it marks the ending of one shape and the beginning of another. The two sides of any edge can be isolated from each other or transitioned into each other, depending upon how the artist has handled the painting of the edge itself.

Look at this little painting by Qiang Huang.

"Away From the Heat" 6' x 6" Oil on

Notice that edge B clearly differentiates its shape from the one adjoining it whereas edge A is diffused into its surrounding area. But in edge C, the bottom of the shape completely disappears into its shadow.

Qiang has used here the three devices for handling edges--hard edges (B), soft edges (A) and lost edges (C).

Whereas hard edges bring shapes to an abrupt halt, calling our attention to them, soft and lost edges enable shapes and images to flow from one area of the painting to another. The soft edge makes a gentle transition, but in the lost edge, we don't see a break between where one shape begins and the other one ends. Look how Qiang has worked his edges in another little painting,

"Afternoon Tea" 9" x 12" Oil on Canvas

Examine how he has painted the handle to the tea kettle. By interrupting portions of the handle, losing its edges into the background rather than isolating them into one continuous shape with hard edges, Qiang has given a greater interest and unity to the image.

Here's a challenge for you: Examine this little painting by Qiang and find all the lost edges, soft edges and hard edges.

"Limes and Grapes" 6" x 6" Oil on Board

Now, look specifically at just the hard edges you found. Notice how your eye migrates to them. Next focus on the soft edges. Notice how they create a transition from one area to another. Finally, the lost edges. Imagine how stilted the painting would be if these were clearly defined rather than being lost.

Our eyes want to participate, to become involved in paintings we view. We want to be challenged, not spoon fed. When an artist uses just enough hard edges to bring us into the painting, then employs soft and lost edges, our eyes become involved. We feel like we've been invited to become a part of what the painting is all about.

How One Painting Is Composed

2011-09-30T23:48:00.000-04:00

Frequently folks want to take issue with how much composing a painter does. But the seasoned painter knows that to get it right, it must be rightly composed. It's not that difficult: it's just a matter of practicing one principle at a time until it becomes a natural part of your working process.

One beautifully composed painting I discovered recently is "The Dancer," a watercolor painting by Carla O'Conner. Today's post is about how she made this happen.

What do we see working here?

"The Dancer" 30" x 22" Watercolor

The first thing I see is an underlying structure of triangles, one of the most powerful organizing methods available to the artist.

Notice how the image is anchored to the painting's edges at each point a central triangle, enabling the negative shapes--those shapes outside the image-- to form their own triangles. And look how each of these is a different size and configuration: that's using the principle of variation.

Next, look at the painting's notan. All the darks are connected forming a visual path guiding the eye from one area to another giving unity to the entire piece. In quantity though, there is more light space than dark, the principle of dominance at work here.

Back to the painting.

Notice the strong vertical alignment of shapes, the strong vertical edge of the head, the head looking downward, the stretch of the arm aligned with the vertical edge of the painting and the vertical format itself, all giving balance to the entire piece.

And finally, study how O'Connor uses the contrast principle by juxtaposing strong darks within a field of strong lights and how she achieves the color harmony principle using both low intensity and analogous colors.

And we don't have to know all this to enjoy this painting.

Getting To the Point

2011-09-23T18:56:00.000-04:00

An adroit artist can focus our attention without our being aware of what's happening. One easy method to make this happen is a visual device called one-point perspective, an approach artists have been using for centuries.

Photographer unknown
Notice in this photo how all lines converge to a single point. That's how one-point perspective works.

Take a look at how artist Joe Paquet uses this device.

"Classic Saint Paul" 8" x 12" Oil on Canvas

Pretty elementary, right. One-point perspective works when the artist arranges major shapes or points of emphasis so that our eyes are guided toward a single area called a vanishing point. It's a natural consequence of how the eye sees parallel lines in real life. It comes with our natural ability to see depth as when we're looking down a hallway.

Photo by MarvinOS

Just like they do with all of nature's organizing systems, artists find intriguing ways to employ one-point perspective. Look at how Paquet found it and made it work here.

"Santa Rosa Creek Road" 12' x 16" Oil on Canvas

He's a bit more subtle in this next piece.

Eagles' Nest Stage Stop 8" x 10" Oil on Canvas

And he does a similar thing here.

"Queen Anne's Lace" 8" x 10" Oil on Canvas

One-point perspective is not so much a composition principle as a structural device that can guarantee an artist both an eye path and correct visual perspective. Sometimes a scene will contain exactly what you need; at other times the artist will make a few adjustments to enable the images to fall within the structural intention.

Probably one of the most ingenious one-point perspective painting ever was done more than 600 years ago: Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Supper."

Have a fun weekend.
Dianne

Take This Path

2011-09-16T12:14:00.000-04:00

A path for a painter is like a melody line or chord progression for a composer. It's our way of getting the viewers' attention then guiding their eyes to the areas where we want them to travel. We use a variety of methods to achieve this. Look at this painting by Jennifer McChristain. Where do your eyes first go?

Jennifer McChristian "Rue Saint-Antoine"
Oil on Canvas

The first thing I see is two people walking toward us. After that I notice the other two people, cars, and then the overall scene. Then, as an afterthought, my eye goes to the red sign in the upper left of the painting then to the rear of a truck exiting the scene. The sign and truck bring my eyes back to the figures. That's the path.

Experiencing this work is like feeling a chord progression pulling us from one area to another before we come back to the major key. To keep the chord moving, the artist uses temperature contrast (the warm colors used in the building, figures and truck within the cooler colors of the buildings, street and sky), isolation (the dark figures within a light space), and one-point perspective (angles of the street and buildings vanishing to a single point).

That's better than a bagel with butter and jam.

Note: After a long hiatus, I hope I'm back to doing regular weekend posts on this blog. Thanks for hanging in there with me.

Alzheimer's Has Not Taken Her Art

2011-07-03T18:39:00.001-04:00

One of my students of many years is now 92 years old and has Alzheimer's, yet even though she had not touched a brush in several years, when her granddaughter set her up for painting, not only did she paint as if she was picking up from yesterday, she spouted out the art lingo as if she'd been painting every day.

So this week's post is in honor of Mignon Bruce, artist and lover of the arts. Here she is with her son holding her newest painting.

Mignon is one of those rare human beings who in addition to being an artist herself devoted her long life and an indeterminate amount of energy enabling an awareness and appreciation of the arts in an artless community. Her determination and support for artists in our area has been as tenacious as it has been fruitful. Whereas forty years ago interest in the arts was sparse, today this same community sports an abundance of artists, a community theater, an active and growing art department at our local college and several art galleries. In every single one of these areas I can find Mignon's footprint.

And today even though Alzheimer's has stolen from her far too much, she is proving what I've always known, that art is an extension of the soul and does not perish.

Understanding Intensity in Color

2011-06-25T09:04:00.000-04:00

Color contains three attributes: hue, its location in the spectrum; value, how much light or dark it holds, and intensity (also called chroma) or the saturation of hue within the color.

Look at this graphic. The colors are full saturated even though one hue merges into another.

Fully saturated means the hue is not neutralized by a complement. The hues closest to the center are darker in value, but they remain as saturated as their lighter versions close at the edge. All these hues are at their highest intensity.

Here's the same example with some of the saturation taken away or neutralized, each having a bit of its complement mixed into it.

The hues remain the same, but the intensity is slightly lowered, a bit more neutralized.

And here it is again with all the hues totally neutralized. Notice that with the hues totally neutralized they disappear and the intensity is gone, but the values remain.

So, why is this important to a painter?

Being aware of the complexities of color and knowing how to manipulate them opens up for the painter an abundance of options so that the ability to see nuances increases both in observing and in making decisions.

An Argument for Principles of Composition

2011-06-11T10:21:00.001-04:00

BOUNDARIES
We live in an era of artists rebelling against boundaries. It's nothing new-- questioning boundaries is a driving force that keeps humans evolving. But too often a principle gets mislabeled as a boundary and consequently gets abandoned, to the detriment of the artist.

ASIDE
There are artists among us who consider composition principles boundaries. These folks complain that if they spend their energy concentrating on the principles while painting, they'd give up. And some argue that principles serve only to inhibit the creative process. They complain that they're not interested in making great works of art, just finding some joy in life. They just want to paint and not be bothered with having to think about it.

BOUNDARIES VS PRINCIPLES
A boundary is a wall or a line of demarcation. It's intention is to define two sides of a place or thing or to limit access. It's purpose is to divide.

A principle is a fundamental of how something works. Its function is to hold something together, not to limit or divide.

CONCLUSION
To reject learning and using principles of composition is to limit the scope of ones creative potential. The boundary is not the principle itself, rather the projection we place on it when we make assumptions about it rather than to take the effort to explore its possibilities.

When NOT To Compose

2011-05-27T00:01:00.001-04:00

Earlier this spring, I visited a sheep farm to watch the annual sheering. I had expected to see the sheering process, but had not anticipated that everywhere I looked there would be subject matter. It was close to overwhelming.

I saw potential paintings in every direction, hundreds of them. At first I was a bit stunned by the overload of images.

...a newly sheered sheep on the way back to pasture...

...freshly sheered sheep grazing...

...a young girl riding her bike...

...lamas in the back pasture guarding the sheep...

... unsheered sheep in the holding areas...

...sheep being shifted in place for a sheering...

...and the sheering, itself.

And it all was in motion. Positioning the camera and taking pictures as fast as I could, I was still missing stuff in between shots. There was no time to think. And certainly no time to compose. It was simply gathering raw images while trying to stay aware of all the surrounding sensations--the smells, the sounds, the atmosphere.

This is another side of being a painter. It's a time NOT to compose, just to tune into whatever images get your adrenaline going and gather as many as you can. It's the flip side of having your subject in the studio with plenty of time to study it or of setting up to paint on location where the light moving is the only thing that makes you hustle.

What is done with the images gathered may or may not be significant. They could get filed into the archives of my computer or they could become the subject of a spate of work. That doesn't matter. What matters is that I not miss an opportunity to record something that spoke to me, even if I didn't understand at the moment what it was saying.

The 20th Century Argument

2011-05-21T10:52:00.000-04:00

This post is more editorial than tutorial. Important nonetheless.

In a recent issue of Southwest Art, Richard Schmid was asked, "What are some of the biggest changes you've seen in your career?" His answer: "I've seen a widespread turn away from what we call modern art, and a strong turn toward highly skilled and serious content in American painting."

Left: Pablo Picasso "Seated Woman with Wrist Watch," 1932
Right: Richard Schmid, "Portrait," 1990's

Schmid's answer got my attention because, being close to his age, that probably would have been my answer as well. Those of us who were university art students in the sixties know quite well the influence of 20th century dogma on our various directions as artists. For decades, the mainstream required that we absorb its attitudes if we were to be successful.

What I admire about Schmid is that he was able to transition through those attitudes, taking from them teachings that could strengthen his painting while staying firm to his own identity as artist. What does that mean?

20th century dogma considered developing drawing and painting skills archaic. Ideas and expressiveness, uniqueness and invention and manipulating space were paramount. Visual thinking ruled over skills. Another way to say it is that the pendulum of visual art swung all the way to one side where either total distortion or extreme order over-rode craftsmanship.

Heroes of the day were artists like de Kooning, Rauschenburg and Mondrian.

Willem de Kooning Robert Rauschenberg Piet Mondrian

But pendulums often swing in the opposite direction when a thing wears itself out, when those involved began to demand something different from what they are being given, when preachings of the day become hollow and empty. And so gradually, artists with university degrees began to enroll in workshops and apprentice themselves in order to develop the skills their colleges did not give them.

Workshops and tiny art schools mushroomed, founded by instructors who had managed to locate and study with rogue artists who had chosen to develop their skills outside of the university setting. The universities and mainstream were the last to catch on and still today old attitudes prevail, but in spite of that, once again the painters and sculptors of our era are finding out that to be highly skilled is to enable creativity, not the other way around as preached by our 20th century heritage.

One Idea, Many Variations

2011-05-07T00:01:00.001-04:00

How many variations can you put on a theme?

Turkish pianist Fazil Say shows us how Mozart, being both playful and naughty, took "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" and did this:

Similarly, visual artist Pat Weaver has put more than two dozen twists on a single theme, a container of flowers. Go HERE for a moment and take a look. (Don't forget to come back.)

Just as composers like Mozart often elaborate on a simple tune, it's not unusual for a visual artist to explore a single idea in an array of works, each complete within itself, yet having its own unique take on the chosen theme. One way to do this is to play with the color key like Pat Weaver has done.

Look at two of Pat's still life paintings:

Still life paintings by artist Pat Weaver

You can see that one of these painting's key registers on the warm side of the Color Wheel while the other falls in on the cool side.

But look what happens in this one:

Pat has used two keys in her pot of geraniums and with a sweet twist: most of her green notes (green being on the cool side) are predominately a warm green whereas her red (red being warm) notes are on the cooler side of red.

If you listen to all the spins Mozart put on "Twinkle, Twinkle..." you can hear how each dances around the tune, yet retains our recognition of it. Pat Weaver's many variations on "flowers in a container" each carries a specific use of color giving it a singular interpretation and expression.

Each of these creators took a given and found multiple ways to expand it into something new and unique.

It's Set in the Key

2011-04-23T00:04:00.000-04:00

This is my vacation piece. I'll be on medical sabbatical for a little while getting my right hand--my dominant one--repaired and recuperated.

Meanwhile, this is fun:

2700 years ago a Greek philosopher named Pythagoras standardized musical tuning into a system he called the Circle of Fifths. It was he who diagrammed the relationship of our twelve major keys, an invaluable tool for composers and musicians in Western music.

Within Pythagoras' Circle of Fifths, we can locate any key and find its related chords. Here's how it looks:

The Circle of Fifths designed by Pythagoras in the 6th century, BC

(Disclaimer: This particular design of Pythagoras diagram is posted on several internet sites. It is unclear to whom it should be credited.)

To see how this works, locate C on the circle. Glance to the left of C and you'll see F, look to the right to find G. C, F and G are the three major chords in the key of C. In the little circle underneath them are the minor chords related to the key of C.

Now here's the fun part: four hundred years ago the traditional Color Wheel was diagrammed by Sir Isaac Newton. This wheel also is a twelve-part unit.

The traditional Color Wheel as designed by Sir Isaac Newton in the 1600's.

No different from the Circle of Fifth's importance to musicians, the Color Wheel is the work horse of visual artists. The more a musician learns about the Circle of Fifths, the richer the music can be, and the more a visual artist learns about the Color Wheel, the more fertile the possibilities are in painting and design.

And not unlike how a composer sets a musical piece in a key, the artist has the ability to set the key of a painting, giving it the same sort of unity as a key gives a piece of music.

Left "Weaver" by Richard Schmid
Right In a Moscow Cafe" by Robert Genn

The paintings above are similar in that each features a person engaged in doing something, but their major difference is their key. Robert Genn's has keyed his piece in cool colors (colors in the bluish range) whereas Richard Schmid's painting is keyed in warm colors (colors in the yellow/red range).

Here is how each is positioned on Newton's Color Wheel:

Schmid and Genn paintings each placed in their key of colors.

What's so much fun about all this is the similarity between the two diagrams we artists and musicians depend upon and the many parallels in the ways they are used.

And once my hands are working again, I plan to explore this in upcoming tutorials. Meanwhile, enjoy this thought: however you look at it, everything is connected.

The Power of Gesture

2011-04-16T07:08:00.001-04:00

Our gestures express our identity. Whether in our handwriting, our gait, or the movement of an arm while talking, folks who know us recognize us as quickly by our gesture as by our voice.

Gesture is movement Gesture drawing is quick drawing capturing the movement within the subject. The subject itself might not be moving, but our eyes are in perpetual motion as they scan its visual makeup. Long, subtle curves cause our eyes to move more slowly, short abrupt curves, faster. We zip right along straight lines and leap from segment to segment when a line changes direction.

When we record these visual movements with a quick, linear drawing--as if doodling--we express the shape's gesture. Our spectators recognize the subject by what it's parts are doing rather than by how it is described. It is so simple, yet many artists find it challenging.

But for Larry Roebal, it's mere "doodling."

Larry Roebal's "doodle" for April 15, 2011

Almost daily for over the past three years, Larry "doodles" an image from the day's news. Using ballpoint pen, drawing on top of the news article that grabs his attention, he quickly renders a drawing of the news article's subject, then posts the drawing to his daily blog. Larry calls these gesture drawings "doodles."

Three hundred years ago, there was another "doodler" doing very much the same kind of thing. You might have heard his name: Rembrandt.

From the sketchbooks of Rembrandt van Rijn 1606-1669

And five hundred years ago, there was an artist named Michelangelo who was himself quite the doodler .

From the sketchbooks of Michangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564)

This thing we do that Larry calls doodling is an artist's most immediate tool for exploring and discovering the subject's inherent essence. It's a means for sharpening our observation skills while doing visual research. And even though it's not results-oriented, the outcome has a life of its own.

Call it doodling, call it gesture drawing--its label is insignificant. What is significant is its power to capture and express visually the heart and soul of the subject in the handwriting of the artist.

The Power of a Repoussoir

2011-04-09T08:26:00.003-04:00

What do I do if I want to get your attention?

In his popular Fifth Symphony, Beethovan gets our attention with a precise da/da/da/DUM. And Welsh poet Dylan Thomas opens one of his poems, "And death shall have no dominion." Not so unlike these attention grabbers, Andrew Wyeth in "Christina's World" does this:

"Christina's World" Egg Tempera Andrew Wyeth

The female image in Wyeth's painting is a repoussoir in action: it captures our attention and leads us to the distant images.
What fascinates me about this device is its flexibility, its potential for free expression within a traditional pattern, one that yields unity while bringing us into a painting. (In case you'd like a more in-depth definition, I explained how repoussoir works in one of my Empty Easel articles a couple of years ago.)

I particularly enjoy paintings whose notan (see last week's post) is interlocked within a repoussoir. When I see this working in a painting, it reminds me of an Italian sonnet , a device that acts like a repoussoir: two major parts where the first is an argument, the second a resolution.

Paintings employing a repoussoir within the notan pattern have two major parts as well: one overall light or dark value usually anchored at the bottom of the painting leading the eye to an opposite value anchored at the top.

Anchored at the bottom of each of the three paintings above is a major light leading our eyes to an important dark area anchored at the top. Richard Schmid does this in his landscape painting on the right, I used in my painting of squirrels on the upper left, and Pat Weaver does a similar thing in a painting of people on the lower left.

If as you look at each of these paintings you squint your eyes, you can see this happening. You experience in each piece a repoussoir built within a notan pattern, three totally different paintings each saying entirely different things, but employing the same device: a visual sonnet. Now, that's captivating!

Note: If you'd like to receive these tutorials by email, sign up in the left column at the top. And if you'd like me to do a tutorial on some individual composing principle or problem, let me know in the comments section below.

Limits Or An Open Door?

2011-04-02T08:00:00.112-04:00

There are no limitations except those we impose. No form or pattern any artist selects need be confining, rather a glue that holds the piece together. Today's doctrine that yesterday's pattern inhibits creativity is flat out wrong: an artistic structure is a scheme, a path the artist chooses to enable an explosion of expression while keeping it unified. The notion of breaking out of the box misleads us.

One structure I keep revisiting, one visual pattern that continues to lure my attention is the notan, a simplified arrangement of two major shapes found in the overall collection of lights and darks.

Original photo of Herefords in pasture.

Notan study of original photo. Notice how each inherent set of lights and the darks link together into one connected shape creating a pattern. While discovering this pattern, I deleted the frontal trees because they divided the composition.

"Sautee Herefords" oil painting based on the notan pattern

Notan exists as a concept invented somewhere in time and then given a name. Today I use it as a guide for discovering light and dark patterns in nature. It is that discovery that I use as the unifying adhesive of a painting. Confident the notan will hold it together, I'm free to discover and explore all sorts fun stuff.

Chopin did that with the mazurka,--another concept invented and named somewhere in time--as pattern for at least 58 of his compositions. And Shakespeare used the sonnet pattern--same process, different mode--exploiting it to spout forth more than 150 poems. (See last week's post.)

Neither notan nor mazurka nor sonnet is a restriction, rather each is a container within which we can discover unlimited possibilities. We need only to be alert.

What's In This Greatness?

2011-03-26T09:47:00.000-04:00

We wonder why some art works live for centuries while others get lost in archives of communal memory. Visual artists, writers and composers create works that excite us humans hundreds of years later. What is there about Chopin, Shakespeare and Michelangelo whose works continue to awaken within us a spirit of excitement, a desire to experience their them over and over again?

One thing that keeps getting my attention is whether by conscious choice or by intention, they all have in common their use of an internal pattern: Chopin's mazurkas, Shapespeare's sonnets and Michelangelo's triangles. Something about that structure enables artists to express the impact of a moment in time and make it eternal.

What's exciting to me is not the pattern itself, but how the the artists transform their pattern of choice while retaining it's underlying formation.

Michalengelo's "Pieta"

And so discovering patterns and finding ways artists transform them is what I'll be exploring as I resume my Compose tutorials. That should keep me busy for a while!

Current Update

2010-05-23T18:31:00.005-04:00

Howard left us on January 28 of 2010. I am in the throws of regrouping and coming to terms with my loss. I have begun painting again, but am easing back into blogging. So this blog will remain on hold until I can again gain the clarity of mind to resume it. Meanwhile, thanks for your patience and support. You can see what's I'm doing HERE .

Dianne

P.S, By some miracle, just weeks before Howard's death, we managed to get the poetry manuscript published. The title is Under the Diamond Pulse, available at Amazon.com for $29.95.

October Update

2009-10-19T12:46:00.004-04:00

In July my intentions were to write to this blog when there was an occasional available moment, but there has been no time for that. Howard is a poet and before becoming so ill had just finished compiling a manuscript of recent poetry for publication. There was no energy nor time left to seek out publishers so we both decided to publish it as a website. That has been the project of my focus since early summer. And it's been worth it. Now Howard's poetry is available at howardghanson.com and we both are so proud of the project.

Already having lived six months longer than expected by the doctors and still in the care of hospice, Howard continues to inspire me with a human spirit totally unaware of how fragile a body it lives in. We continue to cherish life rather than grieve impending death, laughing generously and enjoying one another's presence.

Update and More Immediate Plans

2009-07-11T11:43:00.001-04:00

It has now been three months since hospice became a way of life in our home. Howard is a real trooper, demanding in every way quality of life and refusing to be bedridden regardless of so very much loss of independence. Care must be constant, but already there have been multiple gems in moments of struggle. And laughter continues to play a key role in our lives.

There is no time or energy to paint, not yet. But I have decided, beginning next week, to resume my tutorials on this blog even though Bagatelles and Meanderings will remain on hold for a while. I have relinquished my writer's position on Empty Easel, at least for the time being. Dan has graciously offered for me to resume those tutorials whenever I can, but I won't be doing that any time soon.

Meanwhile, I look forward to getting my thought processes artward. Stay tuned.

A Brief Time Off Line

2009-04-12T12:47:00.001-04:00

Dear Friends,
I wanted to let you know that I have not disappeared, but I will be off-line for some time to come. My soul mate and life partner of the past 28 years is now in the care of Hospice here in our home, and this is where my focus and energies currently are. Until I can get back to painting and blogging, do enjoy what's already here.
Thanks for your visit.
Dianne

The Complete Picture

2009-03-28T10:45:00.003-04:00

Early on in my teaching career, I encountered a chart by Ocvirk, Bone, Stinson and Wigg in a text entitled Art Fundamentals, Theory and Practice. The chart was suppose to be a visual diagram of how our principles and elements work together, but I found it lacking so undertook to revise and redesign it. That process lasted for many, many years and still is not over today.

I used the chart as a "cheat sheet" when doing composition lessons with my students and continue to use it today with my critique group, Second Tuesday Art Guild. I introduced it to this blog once before, but am giving it an encore because next week I want to begin a series of tutorials on its contents. So for this week, here's the chart for you to ponder. Beginning next week, we will break it down, flesh it out and pull together how it includes so much of everything that goes into a good painting.

THINK CHART FOR VISUAL COMPOSING

“We construct images, we compose art work.”
The ACTION principles (Things we do to compose)
Select and Place (Rule of Thirds--Golden Mean—Rabatment—Notan, etc.)
Gradate or Modulate
Alternate
Contrast
We do this…
Vary
Repeat
Make similar
Elaborate
Economize
Isolate
Overlap
Juxtapose
Find Angle of Light/Shadow
Find and Use Perspective
Create Dominance
(and more)
The Elements (Our Vocabulary)
Color:
Value
Hue
…with these
Intensity
Temperature
Shape
Size
Direction
Line
Texture
The RESULTS (What We Get)
Pattern to avoid randomness
Balance to prevent one-sidedness
Order to negate chaos
…to get these.
Harmony over discord
Rhythm rather than static
Proportion to avoid lopsidedness
Movement or Transition as opposed to Aimlessness
Form to avoid distortion
Focal Point versus not sure where to look
Emphasis rather than erratic
Eye Path in favor of spottiness
Toward our ULTIMATE GOALS
Unity to avoid divisiveness, fragmentation (We want the work to hold together)
Purpose to negate aimlessness (We want the work to have meaning)

Free To Create: The Big Eight

2009-03-21T09:34:00.003-04:00

If you've been keeping up with this blog, you know that for the past eight weeks, I've been addressing individually our visual vocabulary, the elements. I've tried to show how each can play its own role in our painting not unlike parts of speech in the spoken language.

A noun names -- a shape defines
A pronoun stands in--size relates
A verb acts -- value structures

An adjective defines -- hue describes

An adverb modifies -- temperature harmonizes
A preposition links--a line leads
A conjunction connects--direction controls
An interjection accents--texture intrigues

We don't need to know what a noun is to ask for a refund, nor do we need to know what a verb is to spend the refund once we get it. English speaking people can communicate very well without knowing a thing about the structure of the English language. But once we DO know how these parts of speech work, we can use them to express ourselves more adequately.

It's called communication. As artists we're involved in a two-sided activity: on the one side we express ourselves--on the other, we communicate what we have expressed. No matter how poorly we have expressed it, something gets communicated even if it's total confusion.

But the better we understand the tools with which we work, the more in control we are with what they can do. The bigger reward, though, is this: the better we understand our tools, the freer we are to be creative with them.

Now, there's a lovely Springtime thought!!!

Temperature: The Harmonizing Element

2009-03-14T06:00:00.003-04:00

It's confusing to look at nature and determine whether the visual temperature is warm or cool. Yet master artist Richard Schmid is adamant (and I agree) that the temperature of the light is our most important harmonizing element because it effects all the colors illuminated by it.

But even Schmid admits that determining what we see as warm or cool can be tricky. Here are his own words:
"Generally speaking (and only generally), sunlight is warm. Consequently, the more overcast the sky, the cooler your light will be. Mother Nature is very tricky though. She can throw you a curve when you least expect it. Trust your eye always. " (Taken from Schmid's website FAQ page)

Now, trusting our eyes look at this:
In our discussion about value I emphasized that we see because of light. A simple concept, but the heart of every decision we make when painting. Now we go one step further: every light source has a color, therefore a temperature--it is either warm, cool or neither. Forget about the "neither" and assume as an artist you're dealing with either warm or cool.

Both photos above show the same batch of lemons, yet the photo on the left is in warm light and the one on the right in cooler light. Visual temperatures are cooler when they are bluer, warmer when they are redder or yellower.

Now look at this:
The ball is blue (well, of course it is !) Blue is the coolest of colors, but notice where a warmer light hits the blue ball most directly, the color appears warmer. That same blue appears cooler as it moves into shadow. I've isolated these with samples across the top to make it easier to see. (You might have recognized that I used this same illustration in an Empty Easel tutorial about color.)

The reverse happens when a color is illuminated by a cool light.

Let's look at our lemons again--the ones in cool light. Now let's zoom into a shadowed area and sample it. The results are in the rectangle on the upper right edge.

Joila! The shadowed areas are warmer (more orange) than those more directly in light.

Perhaps this simple principle is the most important one to remember when dealing with temperature and color. Our natural tendancy--indeed, some have taught--is to always make shadows cooler, but in painting it's best not to live by rules other than always let your eye tell you what your looking at.

As a general rule of thumb, though, if you shift your eyes between light and shadow of an area, you WILL see a difference in temperature between the two. One will be cooler, the other will be warmer. Most likely, if the shadow is warmer then the light source is cool. If the shadow is cooler, the light source is warm.

Oddly, if you direct your painting choices by keeping this in mind, the painting should feel in tune or in harmony with itself.

And so, the conclusion we always come to is teach yourself how to see, then trust your eyes.

Intensity: The Baffling Element

2009-03-07T06:00:00.005-05:00

In the classroom, intensity was always the one element or concept that boggled the minds of my students. Folks got the value thing--it seemed easy enough to comprehend that a color gets lighter or darker depending upon whether it is in light or shadow. Hue was easy--regardless of whether we used the traditional triadic wheel or the Munsell wheel, students found naming the colors and organizing color schemes easy enough to deal with.

But when we hit the intensity idea, brakes were applied and tires started squealing. So how do we mortals wrap our minds around intensity?

Look at this strip of two colors.

These are the same hue, the same value, but of differing intensities. What is the hue? There's one clue. If you can look at a color and FIRST name its hue, THEN name its value, you might be able--afterwards-- to name its intensity. But how do you name an intensity?

I think that's part of the problem. Intense/neutral. These are the pairs. Neutral has no color at all--theoretically, this is. It's gray. Every single color under the sun can lose its color identity (hue) when totally neutralized by its complement. It can nearly lose its identity when mixed with gray, black or white.So, theoretically a color is most intense at its spectrum color where it has in it neither complement nor gray, black or white. With these added, though, it is either very intense, somewhat intense, somewhat neutral or almost neutral. So our language then is high intensity, middle intensity, low intensity or neutral.

Looking at a diagram of the spectrum (above) and the three colors underneath it, it's easy to see that all three hues are red-orange. The first is a bit browner, the second a bit rustier and the third closer to spectrum red-orange. So how do we know their intensity? The third is obviously closer to the spectrum.

Oranges, reds and purples get rustier or browner, yellows and yellow-oranges get more ochre, greens become olive, blues look grayer. So if you call the first color a brownish-orange, then you know it's more neutral.

Try this: let's look at Martin Figlinski's painting .

"Beach Path, Grayton Beach" (c) Artist Martin Figlinski

The three swatches above are sampled from Martin's painting. Take them one at a time, left to right. Name the hue, now the value, now the intensity. Use the language for naming the intensity as simply "high, middle, low" or "highish, middle, lowish". Doesn't need to get more complicated than that.

Go to the end of this post for the correct answers.

Let's do the same thing with Carol Marine's "Orange Parade"

"Orange Parade" (c) Artist Carol Marine

After we learn to name the intensity, we should be able to become conscious of it when we see it. So rather than call an old unpainted barn gray, we'd call it low-intensity, mid-value bluish-violet, for example.

Seeing and recognizing the hue will go a long way towards labeling the intensity. So remember, if you see it brownish or rust, it's probably red-violet, red, red-orange or orange; if it appears to be ocher, it's most likely yellow-orange or yellow or even yellow-green; if it seems more olive, it's green, if it seems gray either has no hue or it might be blue. These are examples of what you might expect, but don't depend upon them: rather, fix your eyes on the hue first. Once you name it, the value and the intensity should be easy.

Leave me a note in the comments section and tell me how this works for you.

Answers:
Figlinski samples: (1) left, blue-violet/light/low, (2)red-violet/light/low (3)red-orange/dark/low

Marine samples: (1) red-orange/middle/somewhat low, (2) orange/mid-light/somewhat high, (3)orange/high/somewhat low, (4)red-orange/low/low

Meet Munsell

2009-02-28T06:00:00.005-05:00

Below: Color Wheel based on Munsell's Five Primaries

It was Sir Isaac Newton who in 1666 invented what came to be known as the triadic color wheel built on three primary colors--yellow, red and blue.

But in 1898, Albert Munsell came up with a totally new color system, one built on what he called five primaries--yellow, red, violet, blue and green. (See wheel on at top.)

We can use the Munsell color wheel to put together color schemes discussed in last week's tutorial, but with slightly different results. For example, the complement of yellow according to Munsell is blue-violet, the complement of red is blue-green, but orange remains the complement of blue. Munsell's system gives a shorter range between red and yellow than our primary triad does. Whereas the triadic wheel yield 12 colors, then, Munsell has only 10.

Actually, Munsell's arrangement on the wheel is closer to how our eyes perceive color. Try this: find a bright red sheet of paper. Stare at it for 15 seconds, then suddenly shift your eyes to a white surface and hold for 3 or 4 seconds. An afterimage will appear that is actually blue-green rather than pure green.

In fact, Munsell's system is not actually built on a wheel, but rather a sphere that shows the interconnectedness of hue, value and intensity. Our triad wheel is based on hue alone.

To understand Munsell, imagine a globe with all the colors on the surface of its equator circling like colors positioned in a spectrum. Here the are the brightest, purest possible hues. Then imagine all these same colors gradually getting lighter as they migrate upward to the north pole and likewise, gradually getting darker as they move downward to the south pole. Here's what the outside of Munsell's sphere looks like.

Image borrowed from Albert H. Munsell, “A Pigment Color System and Notation

But there's more. The inside of the sphere toward its core illustrate how neutrals are formed. Imagine a slice across the center of the globe starting at green and ending at red-violet. Now imagine what's happening on that slice if on the green side a little bit of red-violet is added just inside the edge, then a little more as it moves toward the core, continuing until it reaches the core where it becomes totally neutral. On the red-violet side, the same thing is happening by adding a little bit of green at a time. That cross section would look something like this image I borrowed from Encyclopedia Britannica:

Inside the sphere color values get lighter as the rise to the top and darker toward the bottom. That's pretty much what the Munsell system looks like

In my mind, the Munsell system is scientific attempt to illustrate the workings of color whereas the triadic wheel is a thinking tool. There is no doubt that within the Munsell system, you could locate any color there is. It's somewhere in there, believe me. And it's fun to try to do that. In fact, it's a good way to understand the true nature of color.

But for my money, the triadic wheel is a better tool for thinking, leaving us more freedom for working out color mixtures.

You can get a more detailed explanation of the Munsell System by going HERE and for more references, go HERE.

Hue: The Scheming Element

2009-02-21T09:40:00.005-05:00

Fire truck red. Sky blue. Lemon yellow. The primary hues. Most folks call them them colors, but color covers value, intensity, and temperature as well as hue. This discussion is totally about hue, the way colors appear around a typical, traditional color wheel. Hue is the name of the color.

Today, there are multiple variations on the idea of a "color wheel", but if a person understands the traditional triadic wheel built on the primary colors yellow-red-blue, none of the others are really necessary. And it really is the simplest way to understand hue.

Studying hues aside from value, intensity and temperature helps us understand how colors relate to and effect one another.

First, there are the color schemes:
A color scheme is a limited selection of hues that will appear in the painting. The artist finds ways to adapt everything in the paintings so that these colors are the major ones appearing. They might vary in value, intensity or temperature but they will not veer away from the designated hues.

The traditional schemes are primary, secondary, tertiary, analogous, complementary, double complementary, split-complementary. Often, though, artists invent their own schemes some of which might be variations or off-shoots of these.

Primary: Red, Yellow and Blue

Charles Reid's "Brown Jumper" is done in a primary color scheme.

Secondary: Purple, Orange and Green

Gaye Adams "White Water" is a secondary color scheme.

Tertiary Triad:

Yellow-Green, Red-Orange, Blue Violet or Blue-Green, Yellow-Orange and Red-Violet. Robert Genn's "Moscow Cafe" uses a
tertiary triad.

Analogous: Any set of colors located between two primaries on the wheel
Clyde Aspevig's "End of June" is done with an analogous scheme with colors located between blue and yellow.

Complementary:

Any two colors appearing as opposites on the wheel
Edgar Payne uses a complementary of reddish orange and greenish blue scheme in this sailboat painting. (Note: This is a close to a complementary scheme as I can find at the moment. Somebody's got a better one somewhere...)

Double Complementary:

Take one color, skip one, then pick the next. These plus their opposites create a double complement.
Morgan Weistling uses the double complements of yellow/violet and blue/orange in this lovely portrait, "Ophelia."

Split-Complementary:

Any color with both neighbors on either side of its opposite.
Lili Pell uses the this scheme with green opposing red-orange and red-violet. This is not
a pure SC scheme because of the appearance of blue. Few are pure.

In next week's tutorial, I'll discuss the Munsell Color Wheel and how it is different from the traditional primary wheel. See you then.

Value: The Supreme Element

2009-02-15T06:00:00.027-05:00

Without value we see absolutely nothing.

At night, if we lose electric power and there is no moonlight, you can see nothing but black. And in a snowstorm in the arctic, you can see nothing at all but white. Only where there is a distinguishable difference between light and dark do we see what's around us. The stronger the difference, the clearer we see it.

So value--the full range of lights and darks--is the most important element of all those in our visual vocabulary. It is the one upon which all others depend. Without it, the others cannot exist.

And value just might be the most often discussed element of all. So rather than explain it, let's take a look at seven ways artists use it.

(1) Value can give a paintings a key--high key, middle key and low key.

High key watercolor painting by Charles Reid.

Low key oil painting by John Singer Sargent

(2) Value gradation can communicate three-dimensional volume.

Oil painting by Carol Marine shows 3-D illusion of volume in pitcher and orange.

(3) Value contrast can show the difference between light and shadow...

Carolyn Anderson's oil painting shows the location of the light source by how she contrasts her lights and shadows.

(4) Value can be used to create visual paths

Jennifer McChristian's "Brown Barn" uses light from the sky, then upon the background buildings, then on the middle ground at the edge of the barn, then to the lower left corner back through the flecks of light within the barn to help route our attention throughout the painting.

(5) Aerial perspective is about creating distance with value or depth on space.

Marc Hanson's painting shows how making background trees lighter makes them appear further back into the distance.

(6) Value can be used to create focal points

Karin Jurick's "A Date With Art" uses the contrast of the light sculpture against the dark painting and wall to create the painting's focal point.

(7) Value can be used to control edges

Carolyn Anderson's use of background light merging into the light on the baby's shoulder as well as the baby's hand merging into the shadows around it--both create lost edges that unify the painting and make it more intriguing.

Perhaps the best way to understand how value works is to squint and study what happens in shadow areas vs what happens in areas of light.

Texture: The Element of Intrigue

2009-02-07T06:00:00.025-05:00

Except for the minimalists, take any painting you like, subtract from it all texture and what do you have left?

One painting I like a lot is Clyde Aspevig's Selway River Wilderness shown below.

Clyde Aspevig "Selway River Wilderness"

On my knees begging forgiveness from Mr. Aspevig, here's what happens when we take away all the texture.Okay, so I had to throw it out of focus to prove my point, (and that IS a bit annoying), but the out of focus shot does give us an idea of what happens when we strip a painting of it's texture. No other element plays such a strong role in communicating the character of images or engaging the viewer's attention.

At the same time, no other element can so easily cause chaos. I dare not reach for another artist's painting to illustrate this point, but maybe the photo below will help.

For texture to work it depends upon pattern. When no pattern is evident, texture is apt to create chaos. In the photo, where the grasses, branches and limbs become so entangled that we can't make out a visual pattern, there is confusion. And where there is confusion, there is chaos. But when textures of such a subject get rearranged into a perceptible pattern, it doesn't matter what the subject is, it can still be intriguing to look at.

So when choosing our subjects, we might very well take something chaotic and give it order just by reorganizing within it a textural pattern.

Our observation and translation of textural patterns can count strongly toward creating interesting areas in our paintings. In Lilli Pell's Into The Evening Sun (below) there are numerous intriguing textures translated from careful observation of the edges of tree limbs, sheep, foliage and grass.

But that's only one side what makes the painting intriguing. The other side is how Lilli applies her brushstrokes. Take another look at the details above, this time focus just on her brushstrokes.

How we wield our tools count as much toward the intrigue of our paintings and drawings as how we interpret the subjects. Take a little trip with me over to Katherine Tyrell's portfolio website and look at the gorgeous textures she creates with colored pencil, pen/ink and pastels. (Note: Katherine's blog Making A Mark is one of the richest resource blogs on the web, but she makes a mighty fine mark as artist, too.)

Now let's go to Colin Page's website. Click on the paintings one after another and study his brushstrokes. One more trip to watercolor painter Carl Purcell's website. Even watercolor offers numerous opportunities for creating textures with tools, something at which Carl is a master at doing.

These artists' works are among dozens on the web done by artists whose handling of their tools (as well as observations and translations) create rich and engaging textural patterns. Delete the textures from any of their works and we loose the intrigue of the artist's handwriting as well as how the artist interprets their subjects.

Direction: The Control Element

2009-01-30T06:00:00.003-05:00

In no art form is the visual element direction more evident than in figure skating on ice. A figure skating choreograph resembles a Jackson Pollock painting with eights and circles and straight line pitches, vertical leaps...

Figure skating choreograph by artist Larisa Gendernalik

Paint by Jackson Pollock "Number 8"

Couples Figure Skating--Photo from mahalo.com

I can remember many years ago a certain figure skater whose routine was not much more than a set of circles with a flying bird body formation. I thought it was quite boring at the time, but we don't see any of that these days. No indeed. Figure skating can be heart-stopping with the many multi-directional changes and leaps.

Likewise, I notice that paintings with a strong directional dynamic hold my attention much longer than those whose movement is too quiet and static. Movement is the key word here: we use the visual element direction to create visual movement. Visual movement creates visual paths. And the nature of movement can create rhythm. So a lot rides on how we use direction as a part of our visual language.

We all know what direction is. North, south, east, west, right, left, up, down, around and around--all those points to which we are constantly aiming and switching. You can't even get out of bed in the mornings without changing direction. And we use "changing direction" as a life metaphor, business metaphor, relationship metaphor, behavior metaphor.

It's role in our painting? To control the viewer's attention. That sounds pretty important, right? Okay, so what do we have available to work with. Well, we can use horizontals (right and left), verticals (up and down), diagonals (leaning), and circles ('round and 'round and 'round and 'round). The key is to use these with enough repetition to prevent chaos and enough variation to keep the viewer engaged.

So how do we create with direction? Flow and transition. Two masters come to mind: Charles Reid and Richard Schmid.

Charles Reid "Two Views: Abby"

1. Accenting points
Charles is adroit at accenting certain points of the total composition so that our eyes want to move --make a transition--from one area to another.

I've indicated some of the major ones with little white arrows. Keep looking--you'll find more

2. Losing edges
Charles is also adroit at utilizing lost edges, another tool that enables the eye movement to flow and to transition from one area to another.

Again, I've used little white arrows to point out a few key areas. Keep looking, though, and you'll keep finding them.

3. Repeating Color
And another of Charles' real genius is his inate ability to repeat color while giving it just enough variation to keep it from being boring. I've circled a few examples here.

These repetitions of color also act both to create flow as well as make transitions.

In a cool background, Charles has used the repetition of warm colors not only to define skin tones and hair, but also to keep the eye moving in various directions.

Next we go to Richard Schmid.

Richard Schmid "Chicken"

4. Guiding Brushstrokes

Richard's delicious brushstrokes are to my mind his trademark genius. Each stroke is guided with intention to define whatever subject is being painted using the careful placement and movement of the stroke.

5. Giving Attention to Edges

Where Charles can lose an edge, Richard can manuver it along the perimenter of the shape to show roughness or smootheness, softness or hardness, swiftness or slowness. His edges are not just perimeters--they control eye movement.

Edges contain characteristics that define the subject. Richard finds these characteristics and renders them in a way that the eye wants to pause and taste it before moving on to the next area.

But perhaps the all time great master of using direction was Leonardo da Vinci. With every thing he did in a painting, he was manipulating our attention just as with every note, volumn and rhythm, Mozart was doing the same thing.
6. Positioning Your Subject
Leonardo turns the face of the Christ-figure toward the left edge, then shifts the eyes to look at the viewer while directing the flow of the hair down the shoulder to the right-hand corner.

He uses a similar ploy in his world-and-ages famous Mona Lisa where the eyes are looking at the viewer, the face is turned slightly toward the left and the hands are positioned toward the right.

Throughout time, where genius has come into play is the artists uncanny ability to notice what's available and to use it adroitly. So we're right back to last week's lesson and all those before. We hone our skills and our eyes and join them together to make it work.

Size: It's Bigger Than You Think

2009-01-24T06:00:00.041-05:00

What a surprise for me when I finally realized how small most daily paintings are. Looking through blog after blog of these little jewels, I automatically sized them mentally at least as large as 9" x 12". I could plainly read 6" x 6" or 5" x 7" or even "postcard," but this data failed to translate into true perception until one of the bloggers showed his little daily side by side with a coffee mug.

Light bulbs! Either the mug is huge or the painting is teeny, which brings up the first requirement for size as a visual element: Size requires clues--there must be a comparison, else size doesn't translate.

Size and Proportion
Seeing a photo of a marble or a tennis ball singularly tells us absolutely nothing about the size of either, but a photo of the two spherical objects together tells us about the size of both because we can see their relative proportion to each other.

We can draw the human body's proportion accurately by comparing the length of the head to its other parts. Keeping all the parts' sizes relative to the head (or any other part for that matter) will guarantee we render individual parts the right size therefore enabling us to create a human image in proportion to itself.

Leonardo shows this in a diagram he did for us with his famous Proportions of Man.

In fact, just as the proportion of ingredients in cooking determines the flavors in food, proportion of sizes plays an important spatial role for every artwork we make whether drawing, painting, or sculpting. Once we make the first shape, the size of every shape to follow will affect and will be affected first shape we made.

Size and Proximity
One way size affects shapes is to show their distance from one another. Our vision is such that the further away a thing is, the smaller we see it compared to anything in front of it. Looking out my window I can see trees. I can hold up one finger and totally block out a tree not thirty feet away from me. The same finger can block out five trees a hundred feet away. My finger is certainly much smaller than any of those tree trunks, yet its proximity to my eyes makes it appear larger by comparison.
In the above painting by Richard Schmid, the height of figure (Nancy) measures a little taller than the huge boulders behind her. That size puts Nancy closer to us and the boulders further away, showing them to be some distance behind her. If Schmid had painted Nancy within a couple of feet of the boulders, in the painting they would dwarf her in size. That's called size relationship.

Size and Foreshortening
But size plays yet another role-- it also enables us to foreshorten. So what does it mean to foreshorten and why is it important to know?

(To stray a bit), prowling the internet, I was hoping to find a clear explanation for foreshortening, but all I could find was a lot of dense rhetoric that I think fails to communicate exactly what foreshortening does. So let's begin with an illustration. Look below at the two photos of the same male cardinal.

The photo on the right is a side view where we can perceive the bird's full length head to tail. The other is a rear view where we can see his tail and his head, but we see them substantially closer to each other than in the side view. In the rear view, the space between the cardinal's head and tail is foreshortened.

The space between two ends of an image is shortened any time the image's length is other than parallel to our eyes.

Here's another example. Notice the cow on the left, more parallel to our eyes. Its measured length head-to-tail is greater than the length head-to-tail of the cow on the right.

Because the middle cow's rear end is closer to our eyes than its head, we see it shorter from head-to-tail than the cow on the left, but longer than the cow on the right whose backside is much further from our eyes than its head. So how much a thing is foreshortened depends upon the proximity of each it's two ends to the viewer's eyes.

Head spinning? Not to worry. None of this is necessary to know if you're a keen observer of what your eyes are actually seeing rather than what your left brain tells you you're seeing. However, when we know this stuff, we can feed it to the left brain so that it will reinforce what our right brain is responding to.

Happy seeing!

And Then There Is Shape

2009-01-17T06:00:00.030-05:00

What is a shape?

Try this. A shape is an area enclosed with edges, specific or implied. That's my definition.

I could not believe it. I checked the definition in my trusty old 1960 edition of Webster's New World Dictionary and I found garbley-gook. Then I got curious and started Googling for a definition. Same thing. Even dictionary.com has no clear definition for shape.

Aside from the definition, let's try to understand shape as it pertains to us as artists. First of all, important for artists to know is that every shape has two parts: the space occupied by the shape and the space around the shape. You can't have one without the other. Think about it.
Above is the famous "Hare" by Albrecht Durer along side a portrait by Pat Weaver. Both have in common an acute observation of the shape itself as well as the space around the shape. That's what makes both shapes interesting to look at, even in silhouette.
Look at the silhouette images in reverse. Switch your attention to the black shapes. Notice how interesting each black shape is on its own. Beyond being aware of both shape and the space around it, each artist has made these shapes interesting by careful observation of their edges and how the edges relate to both sides--the shape and its surrounding space.

But before we dwell on that, let's explore some nomenclature.

Since the early 20th century, shapes that occupy space have been called positive shapes whereas the space surrounding a shape is called negative space. I've always objected to these labels and I'm not alone: efforts abound to find more definitive labels, but none seem to stick. So, we will let it stay for now and use the historical labeling. (If any of you has a suggestion for how we might rename these shapes, please leave them in Comments. Thanks.)

Okay, that tells us one characteristic of shapes. The other is that they fall into two catagories--geometric shapes and organic shapes. Loosely defined, geometric shapes are those with precise edges such as a circle, square, triangle, rectangle and so on. Organic shapes are all the others, shapes whose edges are more random. In painting we are likely to be dealing with both.

And here is where the discussion gets tricky: we can know all this about shapes, but using shapes dynamically in our painting and drawing is a bit different from just knowing about them. So how can we make that happen?

Use acute observation and sensitive interpretation. Just that. Rather than look at a shape and call it a rock, for example, first look for the underlying geometric shape that forms its structure, then study intensely the variations of the edges because these variations are what create the real character of the shape.

Next, look closely at the value and textural relationship of both sides of a shape's edge. Sometimes the negative will be blending right into the positive, sometimes there is a softness between the two and sometimes there is a distinct division.

In my judgement, Charles Reid is one of the best shape-makers among our 20/21st century artists.

Charles Reid "Claire" Watercolor on paper

Reid begins each of his paintings by doing a careful contour drawing to discover and anchor the shapes and their relationships to one another. When he begins his painting, he is constantly shifting between negative and positive, sometimes causing edges between the two to be lost; other times, creating a softness between them and at others, showing distinct sharpness to the edges. What results is a lively painting that continues to invite the viewer to return to it.

For me personally, Reid's paintings are like Chopin piano works--I want to revisit them over and over again. I think that desire to keep looking at a art work is one of the marks of its strength and success. And when an artist is truly tuned in to the characteristics of each shape, a lot is bound to get translated into the resulting work.

Try this. Visit websites of artists like Reid, Jennifer McChristian, Richard Schmid, Carolyn Anderson, Robert Genn and others whose work is strong. List the ways they handle shapes in light of this discusssion, then try some of those techniques yourself and watch the world open up.

Our Visual Vocabulary: The List and Line

2009-01-10T06:00:00.026-05:00

Writers have words. Words have roles. A noun tells us what a thing is; a verb tells us what it is doing. Adjectives tell us something about it. Adverbs tell us how it's doing what it is doing. We call that vocabulary.

Painters have a vocabulary we call visual elements. Each element plays a role in the way we see images in our paintings and drawings. This list goes like this:

Line
Shape
Size
Direction
Texture
Value
Hue
Intensity
Temperature

As a student, I saw and heard the list over and over again. It took some time, though, before any one of the elements became a reality to me. Same in elementary school where I first met the parts of speech of the English language. "So what," I thought. But gradually it dawned on me that these very parts of speech enable me to say what I'm trying to say, that to comprehend their roles will help me to make myself understood without stammering or hesitating with "uh," or repeating that communication-devouring phrase "you know."

Same is true for the visual language. In fact, comprehending these roles is so important, I plan to spend the next several posts looking at them individually.

For example, what does Larry Roibal understands about line that enables him to do this?

Larry Roibal "Arne Duncan"

...and this...

Larry Roibal "Brother Can You Spare 34 Billion'

...and this...

Larry Roibal "Barney Franks"

Look what power Larry finds in a line. He finds the important edges of shapes that show their identity. He finds just the essentials reducing the number of lines needed. He finds a speed for making the line that communicates gesture while retaining contour.

Larry's lines cluster together where needed to communicate shadow, they become heavier where a point of emphasis is needed, and lighter where they eye needs to move on.

Larry's line is mostly a contour line. That's one that searches out edges and rides along them.

Then there's the gesture line that Rembrandt van Rijn understood and used so adroitly.

Rembrandt van Rijn

Rembrandt found action in a line.

Rather than riding edges of shape, the gesture line rides movement, captures the thrust of shapes and action which may or may not follow the edges of shape. Gesture drawing catches what the thing is doing.

Look what Helen South finds that the gestural line can do.
Look to the right here at a smaller version. You can clearly see that Helen has done a gesture drawing of a closed hand, perhaps her hand. In the larger version which initially appears to be a collection of scribbles, we are aware of the movement, what the shapes within the hand are doing--edges circling other edges, edges traveling from one area of the closed hand to another. When we reduce the size, we see the hand itself more clearly. We see that drawing what a thing is doing also commuicates what it is.

Whether riding the edges of a shape or search out what it is doing, the line is a power tool. For a thorough course in gesture and contour possibilities, I recommend Kimon Nicolaides The Natural Way to Draw.

Happy drawing!

Lists and "Thanks, Making a Mark"

2009-01-01T14:00:00.002-05:00

If you haven't already discovered Katherine Tyrrell's brilliant blog "Making a Mark," you must and not because she recognized this blog among her top five FAQs and Answers Really Useful blogs. Katherine's blog is one of the best experiences I've discovered within the blogshere.

Thanks, Katherine. It's quite an honor to get this recognition.

***************************************

When I was teaching in bricks and mortar, I enjoyed opening the more advanced classes with a composition lesson. At times I'd choose from one of the two major art magazines (I'll refrain from naming either) a painting that was a bit less than successful (making one wonder how it got published), then we'd analyze why the painting didn't work. At other times, I'd pick a well done painting and we would examine all the dynamics that made it work. It didn't take long for my students to realize that good painting involves much more than just copying images. They looked forward to these little mini lessons and so did I.

For them, I developed a guide which I called a "think sheet" and they called the "cheat sheet." It's not much more than a set of lists, and it's purpose is simply to jog the memory as to possibilities.

To begin the New Year, I want to share my "cheat sheet" with you. Enjoy and Happy New Year!

A Brief Outline of How the Visual Language Works
(A Think Chart for Visual Composing)
"We construct images, we compose art work."

The Elements (Our Vocabulary)
Line
Shape
Size
Direction
Texture
Value
Hue
Intensity
Temperature

The ACTION principles (Things we can do with the vocabulary to make it work)
Select and Place
Gradate or Modulate
Alternate
Contrast
Vary
Repeat
Make Similar
Elaborate
Economize
Isolate
Overlap
Juxtapose
Find and use perspective
Find and use angle of shadow/light
Create dominance

The RESULTS (What We Want To Get)
Pattern to avoid randomness
Balance to prevent one-sidedness
Order to overcome chaos
Harmony to stay in tune
Rhythm to avoid being static
Proportion to set relationships
Transition to enable movement
Form to provide structure
Focal Point and Visual Path to guide the eye
Emphasis to avoid being erratic

Toward our ULTIMATE GOALS
UNITY to avoid fragmentation
PURPOSE to negate aimlessness

The CAUTION principles (Things to avoid along the way)
Tangents
Sore Thumbs
Aimless Centering
Disconnectedness

Copyright 2009, Dianne Mize

The Artist's Zone

2008-12-27T06:00:00.016-05:00

There's no better place for an artist to be than "in the zone". It's a place where all creative people function at their absolute best. It's our inner hub connecting all that we are with all that we know. There is no conscious thought there, there is no time, there is only our being doing. It cannot be faked and it will not let us tell a lie. And the only momentum is forward. It is the highest form of unity and harmony working together within the artist. There is no loneliness there, only oneness. It cannot be forced. But it can be obtained.

So how does an artist get into the zone?

Let's look outside being visual artists. We could look in any direction where skill and performance come together into masterful moments. For example, Tiger Woods, Krsiti Yamaguchi, Joshua Bell, and Maya Angelou--all who have one thing in common: they are masters of their craft but each excels beyond the craft. At creativity time, each slides easily into the zone and that's where they deliver the most astonishing performances.

It's when each person's "inner hub" actively unites their obtained skills, their accumulated knowledge and their inner selves that we find them at their best.

Heavy stuff? Not really. I contend that every single individual who desires it strongly enough can become an artist who can "perform" within the artist's zone. In fact, it's probable that every one of us has already been there more than once. The trick as I see it is to find the zone each and every time we work whether while doing studies or whether working toward a finished work.

I'm convinced that the zoning in happens when we're totally focused on the subject and when we're prepared. I know Joshua Bell's preparedness includes (1) his familiarity with his instrument, (2) his skills acquired for playing the instrument, (3) his perpetual contact with the instrument (i.e. daily practice), (4) his knowledge of the music, and (5) his warm-ups.

I'd bet my last paint brush that artists who stay just as prepared and who approach their subjects with total focus on the subject itself will find themselves in their zone every time they work. Try it for three months, then let me know if it worked.

Happy New Year!

Unity, Not the Same as Harmony

2008-12-19T08:45:00.017-05:00

Last week, I introduced the idea that unity and harmony play different roles in our painting. I focused that discussion on harmony. Here's unity:

UNITY

Unity means that all the parts fit together. In music, we designate a piece for a key such as Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D Major. The title of the piece suggests that whatever goes on in the violin concerto fits somehow with the key of D. It might fit by contrast or by similarity. The same principle works in visual art--parts all need to belong either by contrast or by similarity.

The opposite of unity is fragmentation. In life and in art, to fragment is to fall apart, to break away from the whole, and the result is incompleteness. So how do we know if our painting is fragmenting and what can we do about it? Here is where I would like very much to do the unkind thing and show some examples of fragmented art, but it would be best to try to use another approach. Let's try explaining:

Generally an art work will not fragment if it has...

a strong connecting pattern of darks and lights that hold it together
a good balance so that we don't feel one-sidedness
a visual path to avoid aimlessness

Now, don't leave me yet. I know this little list looks like a bunch of art jargon, and I admit it does come close, but we have to use some kind of language to talk about these things. Let's look at a painting by somebody we know had it all working. Let's look at a John Singer Sargent.

Look at how the lights connect to other lights and darks connect to other darks. Let's throw it into a notan so you can see this better. That's what we mean by point number 1

Staying with Sargent, let's look for balance in point number 2. The strong vertical of the waterfalls and two figures is counter-balanced by the horizontal ornate rail in the background as well as the horzontal surface on which the woman is sitting. Nothing feels topsy-turvy.

And what about point number 3? A good visual path is as necessary to unity as a plot is to a novel. Without it, the eye just doesn't know where to go. Look at this wonderful path created by Sargent. Arguably other organizing methods can help prevent fragmentation, but I contend that if these three are working, the chances are better than average that the piece will have unity. And I believe that when a work has unity, it will stand the test of time.

Harmony and Unity

2008-12-12T09:05:00.012-05:00

In the blogs and other art circles, we see the words harmony and unity talked about like a chef discusses salt and spices, but often I see the two words used interchangeably and they shouldn't be. Each is a distinctive result of something which has been accomplished by the artist during the process of composing and painting.

HARMONY
Harmony happens when all the elements in the painting's are in tune with one another. In an orchestra, if one of the violins is out of tune it throws an unpleasant dissonance into the piece being played. One of the worst ear-assaults is a piano out of tune. No matter how masterful the pianist, if the instrument is not tuned, the music can be nerve-wrecking.

The major element in a painting that creates harmony is color. And the major tuning has to do with the temperature of light. In representational painting, if we perceive all the colors to be illuminated by the same light, we instinctively feel the painting to be in tune.
Look at this watercolor painting by Charles Reid. He has used all the primary colors--yellows, blues and reds-- but all are tuned to the overall cool light coming from the overcast sky. He's managed this by sharp observation, by simply painting what he sees and by doing that he has given us a painting very much in tune with itself. We see yellows and reds cooled by having been neutralized thus harmonizing with the blues.

A similar type of harmony is found with Lilli Pell's painting below.
Pell has actually used complementary colors--orange/blue--as her major color scheme, yet even these complements feel in tune with one another because the oranges have been slightly cooled and neutralized toward blue. We feel the same light illuminating all the colors. Once again, Pell achieved this by looking, perceiving and responding to the colors in front of her eyes.

One emerging painter who continues to amaze me with her ability to harmonize is Karen Jurick. Look at this recent painting by Karen.
If you scan the piece, you'll find yellow, purple, orange and blue or two sets of complementary colors, yet we are not aware of the contrasts, only the freshness and vibrancy of color. Karen was painting what she saw. She got the color in tune because she responded to each of the colors she saw and how they related to one another.

As you move from blog to blog, website to website, and gallery to gallery, if something about a painting bothers you, look first to see if it feels out of tune. Keep in mind, though, that a painting can have many color contrasts and still be in tune. It is when those colors get out of harmony with one another that we feel a sense of visual irritation.

So what does the artist do to achieve harmony? Observe! And respond to what's being seen rather than to guess what one is looking out.

UNITY
Unity means belonging together or a oneness. A family might be made up of diverse personalities, various sizes of people, different eye colors and skin shades, but if the family agrees upon one strong attitude, that manner of thinking can give it unity. In an art work, when many diverse parts are made to fit together, then piece has unity.

Unity, I believe, is an overall motive for composing a painting. In next week's tutorial, I will begin to discuss different methods artists use to achieve this motive.

See you then.

Scale and Composing

2008-12-06T09:06:00.023-05:00

This week's and last, I'm responding to Dar who commented:

I wonder if you have any thoughts about format (size, shape, orientation) and scale (life size, sight size at arm's length or ten feet, etc), and how they apply to composition.

I took a look at format last week, so now let's look at the scale issue. Below are six paintings, each showing the human subject in a different scale in relation to the format. Notice how each puts you, the viewer, at a different distance from the person depicted in the painting. That's what scale is all about.
How far from you are the people in painting #1 as compared with the people in painting #4? And how close are we to the subject in painting #3 as compared with $6. In painting #2, to what extent is the environment important to the person portrayed as compared with painting #5?

These comparisons show that each of the above painting places a different kind of emphasis on subject. Whereas painting #6 brings us right into the little girls thoughts, painting #2 is as much about the market and street as about the person making a selection at the market.

So, when we compose, the closer we want the viewer to be to the subject, the larger the image of the subject becomes in our painting. The more important we want the surroundings to be to the subject, the smaller the subject becomes as compared to other things in the painting.

When we are very close to the subject, our composing of the elements switch pretty much to shapes within the subject and with less attention on fitting the subject into space. On the other hand, when we want the focus to be about human beings in a particular environment or situation, our handling of the elements changes in order to place the emphasis where we want it to be. Whatever our intent, the compositional principles are tools that can help us make the painting say and do what we want it to.

Compare these two paintings by Edward Hopper and Anders Zorn:
The Hopper shows a man on a tiny scale within the context of a huge building whereas Zorn shows us a man whose image occupies nearly half of the format yet the surroundings are still important. We feel very much distanced form Hopper's person, yet a bit more intimate with Zorn's. Whereas Hopper has used the principle of isolation, Zorn has woven the subject into the surroundings.

These same principle works with other subjects. Look at these paintings by Marc Hanson.
In the first, the trees are in the extreme distance with the sky becoming highly important as a unifying factor in the painting; in the second painting, the trees themselves are closer to the viewer serving more as a unifier, the sky being less important; and in the third, the viewer is within feet of the trees, so close that there is no longer an expanse of sky. It is the trees therefore that unify the painting.

Do a bit of blog surfing and look for your reaction to paintings based on how close the artist has placed you to the subject. One place to start is HERE where Karen Jurick, in her new book, shows fifty of her recent paintings on one contact sheet. Seeing them all together, you can sense the role that scale plays in creating a relationship between the viewer and the subject.

It becomes, after all, a matter of what you want to say. The composing principles then become the tools to help you say that successfully.

I hope in these two posts I have addressed what Diana was asking for.

Format and Scale

2008-11-29T10:21:00.021-05:00

Last week, Dar commented:

I wonder if you have any thoughts about format (size, shape, orientation) and scale (life size, sight size at arm's length or ten feet, etc), and how they apply to composition.

We've got two things here to address. I'll look at format this week and pick up on scale next week. (So you'll have to come back :) )

Format

Format means the size, shape and orientation of the surface onto which a two-dimensional art work is made. We all know sizes range from postage stamp to huge murals, that shapes range from the ellipse (or circle), square and rectangle to more complex free-form shapes. Orientation applies to the rectanglar shape--to whether it is presented as a horizontal or as a vertical.

Shape and orientation affect the overall composition more strongly than size because generally speaking, when a composition works small, it will work large and vice versa. But shape and orientation do, indeed, influence the import of the composition.

First, shape and orientation work together. Two shapes--the circle (or ellipse) and the square--have no orientation, but all rectangles do. Rectangles vary from just barely not square to extremely elongated. Look at this set of shape variations on my "Sautee Herefords at Dusk":
A distinction to be made is that the oval and circular shapes have a single, continuous edge giving the composition a softer dynamic. And because there is only one edge within a circle or an ellipse, placement of the subject matter can be almost anywhere within the shape and still work. It's the easy way out of challenging composing.

A square is the next easiest way out. Because all sides are the same in a square, there is no commitment to an orientation. For example, if the subject is a strong vertical, our choice is to reinforce the vertical with the same format or to contrast the vertical with a horizontal format, an even trickier task. But with a square, that consideration does not exist.

But with a rectangle there is variation in the size of the two sets of edges; these can vary in size from subtle to extreme. Here are three examples: Since the major reason to compose is to best interpret our ideas and feelings about our subject, choosing the shape and the format is our first decision toward how a subject will be interpreted.
Subjects usually tell us how they want to be oriented so that their character can be reinforced. Look at the four photos below:

Notice how each fits into its format's orientation as well as shape.

The upper left stance forms a square. The composition might be more interesting to add some space to the right changing the format to a rectangle but a square works.
The upper right pose is alert, a feeling that a vertical reinforces.
The lower left stance is also alert, but the subject "asks" that it be placed in a horizontal format because of its shape. A vertical format would require an equal amount of space at the bottom or top, thus weakening the attitude communicated by the subject.
The same thing is true for the lower right. Because there are two dogs, an elongated horizontal format best focuses the attention on the two as a pair.

The best idea for deciding on a format is to do thumbnail sketches of several possibilities, then use the one that best allows the most interesting composition to emerge.

Discover Harmony by Squinting

2008-11-22T11:12:00.010-05:00

Readers of this blog know by now that I'm an ardent fan of Richard Schmid. Recently while watching the critique section of his video, November, what caught my attention was the comment "the harmony is already out there." The other side of that is this: how do we see the harmony that's out there?

The clue to seeing is the simple act of squinting with our eyes so that no details of our subject are visible. But it's one of the most difficult of things to get an emerging artist to do. Everybody wants to jump right in and begin painting before taking a good look at what's there.

Try this. Look at a bare tree trunk and its surroundings. What do you see? Gray, black, brown?

Now squint your eyes so that all the details go away, stare at that tree trunk through your squint and hold it for a whopping ten seconds.

What colors are you beginning to see? Purples, oranges, blues, golds? Hold that squint a bit longer and allow the colors to settle in.

Notice how the longer you hold the squint, the more evident the colors become. And notice how all the colors are in harmony with one another.

Then, practice gathering information through the squint. What colors emerge? What values are those colors? Here's where the real truth of harmony lies. Below I've done a sampling of each value area.
I can do a painting of the entire scene with variations of these three colors. If I want to make the scene a bit more expressive, I can exaggerate the components of these colors.

I've discovered that these are mixtures of oranges and purples. Here's where I find the harmony and here's how I arrive at my color scheme. It's all out there to be discovered.

Try the above little exercise. Do it several dozen times--until it becomes habit--and you will find how easy it is to get into the habit of squinting in order to discover the harmony of your subject.

Balancing Harmony

2008-11-15T09:32:00.016-05:00

Nothing grates on the human nervous system like a dominance of dissonance. And so a good sense of harmony is as paramount to a painter as it is to a musician.

Harmony means agreement, a fitting well together and being in tune. Although utilizing similarities is a tool for achieving harmony, it does not mean that everything must be similar. It does mean that differences are balanced so that they fit and are in tune with one another. Look at this painting by Kevin MacPherson.
Differences are made by contrasts. In this painting, MacPherson has contrasted the vertical of the figure with the horizontal of the table as well as the lights along the woman's arm and behind her head with the dark of her hair. He has created harmony by weaving these differences together with a dominance of warm harmonious light and soft, loose edges which keep shapes fitting well together.

In the painting below by Richard Schmid, we see a similar way of achieving harmony.
The contrasts are warm against cool, light against dark, busy street vs. quiet distance. As is his particular mastery, Schmid has finely tuned the cools and warms so that they feel as if they're being lit by the same source. This alone can weave harmony into contrasting elements of a painting. In addition, though, Schmid has carefully crafted the edges so that they fit rather than isolate. How we handle our edges can go a long way toward giving harmony to our work, but being faithful to the temperature of the light source is crucial.

We are all aware of creating harmony by repetition of similar colors throughout such as Pat Weaver has done with the color red in the watercolor below. And we see in Weaver's painting repetition of shape and size and two other harmony-getting schemes.And we're familiar with using analogous colors to create harmony, such as Colin Page has done with blues to greens to yellow-greens in the painting below.
In fact, repeating any one of the visual elements can work as a harmonizing scheme, but to keep that scheme from producing boredom by including too many similarities, contrasts and variations are necessary.

Without a doubt, many contrasts and similarities can be used while retaining harmony within the entire piece simply by carefully crafting edges and keeping the painting's light temperature consistent. And these can be achieved by carefully observing the subject and being faithful to what the eye sees as its unique characteristics.

The Utility of What Is Not

2008-11-07T14:26:00.019-05:00

We put thirty spokes together and call it a wheel;
But it is on the space where there is nothing that
the utility of the wheel depends.
We turn clay to make a vessel;
But it is on the space where there is nothing that
the utility of the vessel depends.
We pierce doors and windows to make a house;
and it is on these spaces where there is nothing that
the utility of the house depends.
Therefore, just as we take advantage of what is, we should
recognize the utility of what is not
Lao Tse b. 604 BC

Let's consider a concept commonly known as negative space.

First of all, I object strongly to this label because there's nothing negative about it. As far as I know, the label negative space surfaced during the abstractionists' era when images vanished and the painting of space was the major concern. As defined at that time, positive space is space occupied by shapes; negative space is the space between and around the shapes.

But in terms of the function of space that surrounds our images, I prefer defining space to negative space.
Above is an Albrecht Durer painting on the left and a Pat Weaver on the right. Below each I have converted the images or the positive shapes into white and the space around the images to black.

If we look at just the black shapes, it becomes evident how important they are to forming what we see within the light shapes. Look back at the painting of the hare and focus just on the defining space. Notice how it encompasses the subject, serving as the utility through which we read the subject itself.

Now look at the portrait by Pat Weaver. The same thing is true. The way she has constructed the space around the subject gives strength to the subject.

In the above painting by Richard Schmid, the space of the sky and frontal field are the defining space for the buildings and trees. The size variations created with the tree line create an interesting and entertaining definition of both buildings and trees.

Now, with apologies to Mr. Schmid, I have changed that space in the following illustration.
Now the defining space has lost its strength. Losing that size variation has weakened left us with a mundane sky shape and a weakened painting.

As artists, we tend to spend too much energy on the subject and not enough on the space that defines the subject. Here's an assignment to make you more aware of defining spaces:

Each day, do at least one drawing of just the defining space of a subject, leaving the subjects space blank. That's right--don't draw the subject at all, but rather the space around the subject. Doing this exercise on a regular schedule will transform the strength of your defining spaces.

Tracing Projections

2008-11-01T11:04:00.004-04:00

A practice that can directly effect our compositions is tracing projections. No other issue in the field of painting stimulates as much passion, anger, finger-pointing and self-justification as that of tracing a projected image before painting it.

We hear arguments that tracing is just one of the many tools available to us, that it saves time and energy, that the grand masters of the past used similar available methods, that many artists trace but won't admit it--all these in favor of projections. Those against such tracings argue it's not honest, it's deceiving the viewer by representing skills the artist does not own, that it's not professional.

I offer you a different reason why tracing projections is a bad idea: it locks you in to a composition far too early. Even if the photo being traced is composed well, an artist depending upon the tracing fails to discover composing opportunities that might be inherent in the photo but are not obvious at first glance.

My own experience has taught me that drawing enables me to seek out and discover surprises which can greatly contribute to the quality of my painting. Sometimes these come when, while drawing, I realize that if I shift a shape or alter it slightly, I can give the work an additional strength or change the total nuance of the scene. But most often, the drawing allows me to give the painting a visual coherence by helping me relate more intimately with the subject before committing it to paint

From my own viewpoint, working through the drawing gets my adrenaline going, makes me excited about the subject's potential. Who cares about saving time for the painting when the time spent with the drawing can give such richness to the experience. And why sacrifice an unknown discovery for the sake of accuracy of shapes?

No, I am no fan of tracing. It's not that I'm passing judgment or being an elitist. Rather, it's because I know that the artist doesn't know what she/he doesn't know. What good is it just to make another picture if, as artist, I fail to take every opportunity to make that picture my own voice.

Pulling More Good From Bad

2008-10-25T10:35:00.008-04:00

In the long run, it's best not to work from poor reference material, but on rare occasions, you might want to do a painting or drawing from an old photo which is the only known existing reference of an image long gone. Here's such an example:
This old barn fell and disappeared long ago. The only known photo reference is an old faded slide from which I tried to pull a digital photo.

The first thing I needed to do was to discern whether the photo has any information about the light source and I see that it does. If I squint, I can see a clear pattern of dark created by the cast shadows on the barn, shadows in the background trees, fence posts and foreground weeds.

The next step is to do a drawing where these elements form the initial structure, then see where it will take me. Here's the drawing I came up with:

What I noticed while doing the sketch was an opportunity to push lost edges and light/dark contrasts. The darks behind the barn pretty much define it, then the light in the sky merges right into the roof just as the light on the pasture merges into the lower front. The shadow on the side of the barn defines the bushes and the fence forms an area of interest that pulls us into the drawing.

So with this old deficient photo, there's information to work with, enough to create a drawing, but I don't want to agonize over a painting with no color references.

So, unless you want to suffer, it's wise to avoid bad reference information that has no structure at all. Life offers enough challenges without our jumping head first into another one we know can be avoided.

Bad Photo Reference--Good Painting

2008-10-18T08:53:00.018-04:00

Let's face it. There are times when we must work in the studio using resource material although, I agree, the best reference material is on location. But we'd be terribly limited as artists if we reserved our painting hours for when being on location is possible. So, what if you're in the studio with a yin to paint a certain subject, but all you have are poor photo references. Let's assume the composition is absolutely terrible. What now?

Of course the first thing is to pin down the idea. Why this particular subject? Here's an example of a not-so-good photo.What caught my attention--the idea or concept--is the squirrel at the foot of the tree scratching himself. So the first thing to do is to crop to the idea. Well, that's a little better, but what I've got to do next is to find a decent composition. One approach is to see if any visual path or pattern is suggested or even a hint toward one. Here's what I found.
Along side the movement of the tail a vertical path begins. It moves with the squirrel's cast shadow underneath his belly then on the other side to the left. Follow the arrows in the diagram.

Okay, this suggests to me that I might captilize on that movement and create either an "S" path or a reversed "C" path. One way to determine that is to heighten the contrast on the computer. If I do that, I get this.
Ah ha. I can use the dark of the tree's base and indeed create an "S" path.
The next step is to draw. Study the patterns of shadow and light and play around with the composition. Here's a double page from my sketchbook where I did just that though from other photos, but taken the same time as this one.

And here's a little watercolor painting that followed.
Sometimes there is absolutely nothing in a photo from which a composition can be pulled. In that case either abandon the idea completely or super-impose a composition. I will address that subject in next week's post.

Meanwhile, if you have a suggestion for a compositional topic you'd like me to discuss, leave a message.

Ten Composing Commandments

2008-10-11T09:43:00.010-04:00

Not long after I began this blog about composing, I started receiving e-mails from various artists asking me what I think are the most important considerations while composing. It is true that if one looks at all the principles and their ramifications, it can be overwhelming to say the least and confusing at best.

While I am pretty dogmatic about the importance of an artist learning how to use the principles as tools, I am equally dogmatic about forgetting about them during the painting process. It's a dichotomy in a way: what can be the strength of a painting can also destroy it.

Learning to use these tools must become a part of our bone marrow just as an ice skater's tools are deeply embedded within her muscles. Ice skaters must not think while they are performing; neither must the painter. Yet because our guides live within us, they will under gird whatever we do with our craft.

I gave it some thought and came up with my preferred list. Notice it assumes we're already learned the compositional tools. Or that we apply what we have learned then go learn some more.

Ten Commandments for Composing a Painting
Prelude: Have a clear idea--a concept--of what you want the painting to be about. (Thanks, Marc Hanson, for suggesting that I add this in.)
1. Study subject intensely before committing a single brush stroke
2. Squint while studying subject
3. Search for patterns of light while squinting
4. Search for patterns of dark while squinting
5. Extract design pattern from findings of 3 and 4 and develop
6. While painting look three times, think twice, paint once. (courtesy Robert Genn)
7. Keep every color applied consistent with the temperature of the light source. (Courtesy Richard Schmid)
7. Edit between sessions not while painting
9. Taken advantage of compositional tools throughout.
10. Ignor whatever doesn't belong.

Because each of us is unique, we each must develop our own individual approach to painting. I'm sharing mine only because I enjoy sharing ideas. On my website, I've attempted a personal account of my own creative process. You can see it HERE.

In Defense of Structure

2008-10-04T09:30:00.009-04:00

This is in defense of the tools I keep talking about, those freeing principles that give our paintings an underlying structure just as the skeleton gives a structure to the human body. Frankly, and I mean no offense here, the more I encounter attitudes of some internet artists, the more convinced I become of how much the compositional principles matter.

Two arguments I keep encountering are (1) compositional principles stifle creativity, (2) the professional artist must challenge compositional principles, must break past them. I find each of these arguments disturbing because neither is true and both are misleading.

Leonardo da Vinci circa 1490 "The Proportions of the Human Figure"

Leonardo da Vinci sought after those principles daily. He knew instinctively that there was a strong relationship between the principles by which the human body is constructed and those which undergird a good painting and so rather than defy the principles, he sought to exploit them.

Think about it like this.

We artists are translators, transposers, interpreters, and responders.
An image cannot hit the canvas without first taking a detour through our brains. And somewhere within that most mysterious of all human possessions exists

a collection of every experience we've ever had,
every genetic tendancy,
all the knowledge we've gathered
and all the skills we've learned.

What comes through the brush gets influenced by all that whether we intend it or not. That's what makes every painting we create unique, even if the subject has been painted a zillion times by other artists.

And that uniqueness has it's best chance of translating, transposing, interpreting and responding if expressed through a structure that holds it together and allows it to be communicated just like you, the artist, want it to be communicated. It is the principles that guide how the viewer sees and it is they that give our work it's best chance of being understood.

We all know Handel's Messiah. It is designed on the form of the oratorio. Now imagine this piece without the words. It would be only half there. Or imagine just the words without the music. Again only half there. But that's only a starter. The structure of the music transports the words. The words reinforce the music. And the music has a structure of it's own just as the words do. That's no small potatoes.

Handel didn't just decide to express himself. He put a structure to his self-expression that made us understand it and want to hear it again and again.

I rest my case.

Using Tools: Conscious or Unconscious?

2008-09-27T10:18:00.009-04:00

Responding to last week's post about rhythm, Diana asked: "Do you think this is something most artists do consciously or unconsciously?"

It's an important question and might point to why some artists resist compositional principles altogether. My initial answer is what I always say to my students: Learn it but don't think about it while you're painting. We must stay unconscious of the tools while we're using them, else we loose spontaneity. That might sound a bit counter-intuitive, but it's necessary.

To illustrate, think about Mozart's pen moving at break-neck speed, musical sounds registering in his brain with each notation and chord shift that became visible on his blank score sheet, how each sheet filled and looked like spots from a major bug race to anybody but a musician who could read it.

A sheet from a Mozart manuscript. Have not yet been able to identify from which work.

I don't see what we do as painters as being much different. But here's the sticking point: Mozart was not born knowing how to write music just as we are not born knowing how to read or write an English sentence or how to compose a painting. Mozart studied and learned the language of music and the principles of composing music. And because he had learned it so well, he could write it without thinking, in an unconscious mode, within the form he wanted it to take.

And so the conscious thinking must precede the creation, must be a part of the learning process. It goes back to the right-brain/left-brain theory: the right brain can function at its maximum only when the left brain has first functioned at its maximum. The left brain learns a skill, principle, or technique well enough for it to become habit, and files in the unconscious mind. The right brain then has this stuff accessible to use while engaging in its creative activity. All this can happen over a period of time or while engaged in an activity--the left brain identifies, then the right brain responds and expresses.

It's heathly for artists to do analytical activities using the left brain to learn and to store skills and knowlege in the unconscious mind. That's why to learn the compositional principles will free an artists to be more creative so long as consciousness of those principles doesn't interfere and stiffle the process.

What we want in the long run is wholism: we want the muse to guide us as we respond directly but we also want to know what we're doing. Another analogy is a race car driver who has learned and perfected the skills of driving so that while in a race, the response is unconscious but quick and controlled. That's wholism.