The Role of Edges

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.

The Power of a Repoussoir

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.

re·pous·soir

   [ruh-poo-swahr]  

(From Dictionary.com)

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!

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Unity, Not the Same as Harmony

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...

1. a strong connecting pattern of darks and lights that hold it together
2. a good balance so that we don't feel one-sidedness
3. 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

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.

A Single Unifying Device

Ultimate unity is a blank canvas according to the would-be clever artists who have exhibited blank canvases as their "art". I seriously doubt these folks would really desire our conclusion. Or maybe that's their point. Is ultimate unity emptiness? I digress.

Once we put the first mark on a blank canvas, we've begun a composition. As we add marks, shapes, textures, and colors our painting teeters between harmony and chaos. No matter the size of the painting or the subject, we are doing a balancing act from stroke one. One way to prevent chaos or disjointedness from taking over the painting is to have a single unifying device undergirding the whole work.

Unity means oneness, or sense that things belong together and there are many clever ways to keep a painting unified without losing freshness, excitement and spontaneity.

One popular and satisfying device is subduing intensity of color throughout. Anders Dorn comes to mind as an artist who used this scheme as a constant. Look at his painting "Woman Dressing". Every color he has used, in one way or another, contains its complement to reduce intensity. The overall effect is a feeling of unity, a sense that it all belongs together.

Anders Zorn Woman Dressing Oil 1893
(click on image for truer color)





Now, look what happens if we intensify Zorn's colors, taking away the complement (I risk blasphemy!).

The subtleness is gone. A harshness appears, but something still holds it together. Ah ha. There's another unifying device--hue. Look back at the original and you'll see that almost all the colors have some yellow hue in them. Now that's clever. But it's another way for achieving unity.

Another highly effective unifying device, light from positive merging into light from negative, is used by Richard Schmid in "Weaver" ( right). This is what James Gurney has called shapewelds. It works in reverse, too, with darks from the negative merging with darks of the positive. Remember Schmid's "Pansies" from our Image Trap discussion? This is acheived by allowing edges to disappear between a light portion of a subject and the light around it or by blending the edge of a shadow side of an image with dark in the area around it.

Sometimes the subject itself gives us the unifying device we need. In Pat Weaver's watercolor painting "We've Got Rhythm", the repetition of shapes, colors and sizes of the musicians, their instruments and their music stands do the job. Repeating the same shape and size risks boredom or becoming static, but Pat's use of strong value contrast between shapes keeps the piece interesting and exciting.


I would be remiss if I didn't mention using notan as a unifying device. Review my two posts about notan here and here

Finally, controlling what happens to edges of shapes is one of the most important and too often overlooked unifying devices. Richard Schmid , through his writing and videos, is responsible for making me aware of the power of edges. Look at these two examples by him:

When we paint landscapes, if we give distinct edges to buildings, tree trunks and other outdoor shapes, we risk making the painting feel jerky, the objects in the landscape feel isolated. Schmid's controlled softened edges throughout enable the building and trees to merge with the grounds and sky and feel like there's atmosphere between them. He is probably more conscious of how he handles edges than any single concern in his painting process.

Another place where edges can get problematic is in figure painting. Look how Schmid has subtly blended the hairline into the forehead and face as well as softened the outer edge of the hair into the background, all enabling us to feel the space around the person. He does the same kind of edge control along all the shapes of the clothing, arms and spinning wheel--all giving unity of the figure with the space that surrounds her.

If we were living during the Italian Renaissance, we would know this atmospheric handling of edges to be sfumato .

Spend some time looking at paintings by realistic painters who are among the greats and you will find in each some unifying device. Sometimes it's a single device, sometimes a combination, but even when used in combination, one device will most likely be more apparant than the others.