Avoid The Image Trap: Find A Pattern and Nail It

Image traps usually hit when a bunch of stuff is in the same scene. Here is a photo, a raw image, full of potential image traps.

Of course we could edit out the background cars and even the tent overhead. That would help some, but we'd still have a bunch of objects to deal with. One of the best ways to stay out of the trap is to find a pattern of darks and lights and sketch all those into a flat four-value pattern where like values connect. If we break the photo down into a four-value pattern, we get this:

or you might increase the feeling of shadow by doing this:

or you might increase the feeling of light by doing this:

So what has happened is that all the shadows have been reduced to two values of connecting darks and all the areas in direct light are reduced to two connecting light values. In the two dark values, there is one dark and one mid-dark; in the two lights, one where the light his totally white and one where it's light-mid. If, when painting, we think of color as color value rather than as hue, we'll weld those images together and avoid the image trap.

Each color we see possesses a hue (the color name), an intensity (the color's brilliance or lack of neutrality), a value (dark to light), and a temperature (warm or cool). When we are concentrated only on the color name (red, yellow, and all that), we fall into the image trap, but when we think of the color as to what value it is, we're most likely to avoid the trap.

Richard Schmid illustrates this principle beautifully in his painting "Orange Pansies".

"Orange Pansies"
Oil on Canvas
Richard Schmid

Notice how the pansies in direct light are a lighter, brighter orange whereas those in shadow are a darker orange. Notice how where the foliage is mostly in shadow, the values of greens are kept in dark range whereas the greens in direct light are a lighter value. Notice also that the foliage in shadow is a cooler green whereas in light, the green is warmer, more intense.

In this posterized version, I've dropped "Orange Pansies" to four values. You can see how Schmid keeps a strong connected dark pattern with just a single accent of strong light. Yummy. His mid-darks are dominate, carry the day, with the darkest darks just playing the role of accenting. Then the mid-lights connect together as a supporting pattern with that one lightest-light and a few scattered spots of it as accent. The mid-dark oranges take on the same value range as their surrounding greens. Notice that.

No image trap here. But then, he IS the master, isn't he.

Avoiding The Image Trap: Trust Your Light

On the mast of my easel I have scribbled these words: squint-observe-select-aim-stroke. I know that whatever's in front of my eyes has within it all the information I need to lead me toward a good painting. It's a matter of learning how to see what is actually there.

Artists who continually fall into the image trap limit their attention to what they assume about the appearance of the image. If it's a red umbrella in sunlight, it gets painted red and shaped like an umbrella whereas in the raw image, the eye might not see that much red at all. Actually there might be strong pinks or oranges or even white in direct light and perhaps purples or even greens or blues in the shadows. Values in one shape might be similar to those in an adjacent shape and each might be merging with the surroundings both in light and in shadow.

To fix our attention on the paths that light and shadow are making is to allow us to discover things we otherwise would have missed. If there is a light pattern moving throughout the scene from background to image or image to image, we might capitalize on that visual quality rather than focusing on just the definition of the image. Look what a delightful path of light Pat Weaver found at a racetrack in Kentucky.

Pat Weaver
"Lookin' For A Winner".
Watercolor on Paper

Pat has set the human images within a strong path of dark (you might even call it a shadow path) and celebrated their activity with pools of light flowing in and out from figures to spaces around the figures. Rather than encapsulate each figure with defined edges, she has allowed the light to merge from figures to their surroundings with grace and fluid gesture. The contrast of the strong dark path enhances the brilliance of the light.

When James Gurney speaks of "shape welding", he's talking about this sort of thing where we find similar values among adjoining shapes and merge those values without defining an edge. To look for these things and to paint them is to shift our attention away from the image, finding surprises and excitement that can lift us right out of the image trap toward a successful painting.

The Image Trap

Probably the one thing that causes repeated mediocre and poor paintings is what I call the "image trap". The artist is so concerned with the images in the painting that image take priority over sound composition. Things get painted as individual pieces in local color rather than being related to the whole, considering how color masses behave in light and shadow.

A term I'm using these days is "raw image". Not very elegant, but to me it conveys images out there before they're ever touched by the artist. We select images within their environments to carry our content (or as some say, concept). They are why we're doing the painting to begin with, but if those very images are painted out of context with how light and shadow behave the painting feels disjointed, fragmented, disconnected.

There are many ways to put images in a creative context which visually connects them and, at the same time, enhances their purpose. All these methods are the heart of what good composing is all about. Any single set of raw images contains potential for a profound, mediocre or poor painting. That's why the painter learns strategies to stay out the image trap, therefore strengthening the quality of the painting.

During the next few days, I will talk about staying out of the image trap and keeping a painting connected without making it boring.