Harmony and Unity

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.

Discover Harmony by Squinting

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

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.