Open and Closed

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.

Scale and Composing

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.

Avoiding Percy's "Sore Thumb"

After my “Isolation” post on August 8, I received a request from one of my students asking about how to use isolation without ending up with a sore thumb. She wants to know “How does one determine when to use it and use it effectively within a given subject? What particular things are to be avoided?”

First, why would we isolate anything in the first place. In the delightful Percy’s Principles of Composition, Marvin Bartel’s first principle is “Avoid a sore thumb,” which is where the concern about isolation begins. So why take the risk?

Keep in mind that isolation is a strategy to set a thing apart, detach it, give it solitude. It is available to us, but we would not want to use in every painting we do--unless you're Edward Hopper :). We would use it only if we want to call attention to something really important to the meaning of the whole painting or if we want a special emphasis somewhere in the painting.

When Hopper isolated, his entire painting centers on whatever was isolated. So how did Hopper, the master of effective isolation, manage to avoid a sore thumb every time? Look his Hotel Window.

The seated woman is what the painting is about. Hopper has isolated her by creating the extremely light face, hands and legs within a dark surrounding and by locating her within a large empty space. But he has used two strategies to keep her from being a sore thumb: (1) he’s kept the value of her clothing very close to the values surrounding her, (2) he’s tied in the light of her face, hands and legs with the accents of light around the window and on the drapes as well as the very light walls and painting hanging on the wall.

Now, with apologies to Mr. Hopper, I’m going to change that and make her clothes bright red.

See, now it’s a sore thumb.

Okay, (and Mr. Hopper, I'm SO sorry!), I’m going to change it another way by taking out the light accents, by darkening the walls and removing the painting.

See, it’s a sore thumb again. So that tells us that another way to unify the isolated image to prevent the "sore thumb" syndrome is by repeating elsewhere in the painting something contained within the image or repeating something from the rest of the painting inside the isolated image. My apologies to Mr. Hopper, rest is soul, but my thanks to him for mastering isolation, making it possible for us to study what he did.

Now to the other reason we might want to isolate: to place a special emphasis somewhere in the painting. Look once again at Pat Weaver's little still life painting.

The red apple is a strong emphasis isolation. It isolates because it's totally different in color and in value from the onions in the painting, yet it is within the surroundings of similar subjects, is quite similar in size and shape to the onions, and the dark of its shadow blends with the dark on the plate while the highlight gets repeated all the other whites appearing in the painting. I called it strong emphasis because it is NOT what the painting is about, but equally important to the other subjects in the painting. Now with most hearty apologies to Pat, I'm going to change it to show you why this works.

Now it IS a sore thumb. The only relationship is size and shape, but because of the intensity of the red, it isolates severely. Now I'll do the opposite.

It loses interest altogether. We see by this change what an important role that red was playing. So, here a strong emphasis was key to the success and strength of the whole painting.

We don't have to be able to label strategies and principles in order to make good paintings. In fact, if we get too preoccupied with these, we can stifle the life out of our art work, but to develop a wisdom about aesthetics enables us as painters to put an extra sensitivity and graciousness in our work.

In this age with open acceptance of the "anything goes" attitude, I believe artists need to take the lead toward higher aesthetic standards. That's a good reason to know isolation

Isolation as a Tool, But Be Careful

It's always fascinated me how some artists have a knack for making paintings that stop you in your tracks. Sometimes it's the nature of the subject, other times it's the way the subject was handled, but most likely what caught our attention is both. To make us look twice and hold our attention, one tool used by many clever artists is isolation.

To isolate is to set a thing apart, detach it, give it solitude. In painting, we isolate by...

...closing a shape off with hard edges..
Edward Hopper "The Long Leg" 1935

...placing a light or bright shape among dark surroundings
or a dark shape among bright surroundings...
Edward H0pper "Pennsylvania Coal Town" 1947

...locating a small shape in a large area of a different nature...
Edward Hopper "Sunday" 1926

...surrounding a shape with vast space...
Andrew Wyeth's "Christina's World" Go HERE to see

(permission is required to reproduce a Wyeth work)

...planting a shape among shapes different from itself...
Pat Weaver Watercolor

...giving psychological solitude...
Pat Weaver "Man on Bench" Watercolor

Notice in most of these paintings, several isolation strategies are used at once. No matter which scheme is used, one thing is for certain: the isolated shapes must be strategically placed, thoughtfully handled. If not, it can throw the whole painting out of kilter and cause the image to stick out like a sore thumb.