A Touchy Subject

An artist being caught off guard by a tangent when painting is like stubbing a toe:  it happens when we've got our attention on other things and fail to notice until after we feel the pain.

The generic meaning of the word tangent refers to two things touching, but in painting the term describes a kind of touching that is visually bothersome--bothersome because it either leaves us in doubt, makes us feel ambiguous or exudes a false logic.  While composing, there are so many different things to juggle that it’s easy to miss even the most obvious flaws—and that’s when tangents sneak in.

Tangents can easily be avoided, but it helps to know what to look for during the early stages of the piece. To simplify that process, here’s a chart illustrating nine of the most common tangents.

 

Which of these tangents can you find in the photo below?

Here's what I found.

 Let's take an individual look at these most common tangents and how a couple of them can be used to the benefit of the painting.

1. Closed corner
When a shape completely blocks off a corner of the artwork, it can visually isolate that corner from the rest of the painting, but if a shape is integrated from the corner into the rest of the painting, it can act as a visual lead-in rather than a sore thumb.

Here's how Joe Paquet used a corner shape as a lead in.

Joe Paquet    "Return to Sender "   Oil     

The dark rock mass in the lower right hand corner avoids becoming a tangent by the swirling movement that connects it to the water and leads into the rest of the painting. 

2. Halved shape
When a symmetrical shape is cut in half at the edge of the painting it creates an uncomfortable, chopped-off feeling for the viewer.  By bringing the entire shape inside the picture plane or by cropping the image somewhere other than the halfway point, a symmetrical shape at the edge does not have to be a problem.  (You will also want to avoid cropping directly at any joint of an animal or person, or at a corner of an object or structure.)

In his still life painting, "Out of Shadow,"  Qiang Huang crops the symmetrical container on the left so that most of it appears in the painting.  The vase with its shadow leads the eye towards the arrangement on the right.

Qiang Huang   "Out of Shadow"   Oil

3. Fused edges (object with frame)
When the edge of an image touches the edge of your painting it can create an awkward, crowded or fused  sensation for the viewer.  It's best either to extend the shape beyond the painting's edge or to bring it slightly inside.

This one is tricky.  It has become an accepted norm these days to have edges of images touching the edge of the painting's format.  Sometimes it works, but so many times it doesn't.  Avoid this unless you feel confident that it enhances rather than weakens the composition.

4. Fused edges (object with object)
When the edges of two shapes touch, they can visually fuse together.
 
 Just as with a shape's edges touching the painting's edge, it appears that many of today's artists have decided that objects touching willy-nilly is totally acceptable.  Traditionally, shapes touching in an abstract design work because the objective is arranging shapes to keep the illusion of two-dimensional space, but the artist interpreting three-dimensional space can confuse the spatial depth if adjacent images are not either overlapped or given some space between them.  However, when there is a strong interaction between negative and positive shapes, images touching can be made to work.

In Pat Weaver's "The Pepsi Twins," notice the shapes of the negative spaces around the arms touching.  This is a clever example of how a potential tangent can be made to work without the images feeling fused.

Pat Weaver    "The Pepsi Twins"     Watercolor

5. Hidden edge

When the edge of one object is hidden behind  another object oriented in the same direction, the two may appear strangely joined together.

This one is easily avoided either putting space between the two or showing a continuation of the shape in the rear so that the frontal shape overlaps it.

6. Split apex
When a vertical shape intersects or is directly aligned with the apex of another shape it causes a strange, unwanted symmetry or an arrow sensation.

Avoid this pitfall by shifting the frontal vertical east or west or changing your vantage point.

7. Stolen edge
When the edge of one shape aligns perfectly with the edge of a second shape, it creates an ambiguous edge for both.

Solution? Change your vantage point to allow one to overlap the other.

8. Antlers
When distinct vertical shapes appear directly behind an subject, they often appear like antlers growing out of that image.

This sensation can be lessened by reducing the value contrast, losing some edges of the background shapes or softening their edges

9. Skimmed edge

When the top a vertical image ends at the edge of horizontal one, the two shapes may seem to merge.  Most commonly seen are tops of trees ending along the top edge of mountain tops, but here's another not-so-typical example. 

Solve this one by raising the vertical object slightly so that it overlaps the horizontal, or lower it so that there’s extra space in between.

Awareness means everything.  As we hone our sense of seeing, we become more mindful of how images relate and more adroit communicating those relationships in our paintings.

Note:  This tutorial is a revision of one I wrote for Empty Easel in November, 2008.

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

The Space Between

Are you a foot tapper when listening to music?  I am, especially if there's a lively rhythm.  We create rhythm in paintings, too, and very much the same way as in music.

Our tendency is to think of visual rhythm being made by flowing lines, but intervals create rhythm likewise.  Whereas in music an interval is the time lapse between two notes, in painting it's the space between two edges.  Combine several intervals into a pattern and you've got rhythm.  The space between is as important to the rhythm as are the notes or the edges themselves.

Three kinds of spacing create a painting's intervals--the space between a shape’s edge and the outer edge, between any two shapes within the painting, and within a single shape itself.  When these spaces are too much alike, the painting can suffer, but unequal intervals will create an interesting rhythm.

Karin Jurick's "Lounge Act" uses all three of these visual intervals.

Karin Jurick        "Lounge Act"
Click on image for larger view

When setting up a painting's composition, there are two kinds of intervals that can get tricky, especially in a landscape:  one is how we divide the space between earth and sky; the other, how we space repeated images, especially verticals.

Joe Paquet's "Moonrise, Lake Carlos" beautifully illustrates a compelling earth/sky division.

Joseph Paquet     "Moonrise, Lake Carlos:   Oil

Notice three more smaller intervals within the short ones.

If Paquet had used an more equal division of space between earth and sky, the results would have been a bit on the mundane side.  That's the tricky part:  two often our brain's wanting to see things equally divided will interfere with our choosing a more interesting approach.

That tendency of the brain to space things equally requires the artist to be even more alert when dealing with repeated verticals such as tree trunks and fence posts.  In his painting, "First Greens," Colin Page has handled this problem adroitly by paying attention, not only to unequal spacing when he placed his tree trunks, but by how he tilted them as well.

Colin Page      "First Greens"      Oil

In this notan of Page's painting, notice the variation in size of the space between the tree trunks from bottom to top as well as the width of the trunks themselves--beautiful intervals throughout.

Notan of Page's "First Greens"

One other genre requiring special attention to intervals is the portrait.  Special awareness to the intervals between all parts of the image and the edge of the painting can be as important to a portrait as the interpretation itself.

Take a look at the intervals created by Albrect Durer and Pat Weaver.

"The Hare"  Albrecht Durer  16th century
"Woman in Hat"  Pat Weaver   21st century

I have converted each image into a reversed silhouette to make these shape/edges relationships easier to see. Focus just on the black space in each piece, looking first at the edge of the subject, then at its corresponding edge of the painting.

In each of these examples, it's the variation of the interval that keeps a composition convincing and entertaining.  Only if the intention is about repetition, such as the familiar chess board, does repeated intervals become a tool rather than a flaw in a composition.  Andy Warhol exploited repeated intervals in a number of his works.  Remember "Campbell Soup Cans"?

Andy Warhol     Campbell Soup Cans     1962

But good composing is not Campbell Soup, but then neither was Warhol's piece.

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

Counterpoint

 What do the melodies of "Three Blind Mice" and "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" have in common?  Answer:  they can be sung in a round.  Two distinct tunes can work together at the same time without conflicting with each other.   (Don't we wish our Congress could learn to do that!)  The method of juxtaposing two or more voices in music is called counterpoint.

We use counterpoint in painting, too, but it works differently than in music.  Instead of each part moving parallel and independent of the other, in painting elements move in opposing directions, each balancing the other. A vertical will counter a horizontal and vice versa; a diagonal will counter another diagonal moving in an opposite direction.

 John Singer Sargent was a master of counterpoint.  In his painting A Hotel Room, the verticals in the background are counter balanced by the horizontals on the floor.

Richard Schmid is another painter who often uses counterpoint.  Whereas Sargent has applied a horizontal to counter verticals, Schmid, in Wildflowers, uses opposing diagonals:  the tilt of the large flower on the left is countered by the tilt of the smaller one on the right.

Counterpoint in painting works to give visual stability.  Georges Braque, who with Picasso invented the Cubist movement in painting, depended upon counterpoint as a major composing strategy.  Without it his geometric breakdown of images would have had no grounding.

Georges Braque    "Bottle and Fishes"    1910
Uses primarily horizontal/vertical counterpoint

Georges Braque  "Still Life with Mandola and Metronome: "  1909
Uses primarily diagonal counterpoint

Georges Braque   "Pedestal Table"  1909
Uses horizontal/vertical and multple diagonals in counterpoint

Counterpoint as an organizing strategy has been used for as long as artists have been composing.  Very simply stated, a  horizontal calls for a vertical, a vertical calls for a horizontal, and a diagonal calls for a another one in the opposite direction.  The abstractionists knew this.  Many times it was the primary principle holding their pieces together.

I sometimes wonder whether today's artists should learn to paint abstractly as a prerequisite to learning realistic painting.  Take away the image and one gains an appreciation for composition because that's all we have left to work with.  Add the image to a well composed piece and chances are you've got a strong painting.

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

A Gentle Transition

To be suddenly awakened out of a sound sleep is unsettling.   In the same way, a painting that contains too many contrasting elements can feel like an assault on our senses.  But a painting can translate vibrant life in all of it’s diversity without visually invading the viewer.  One method for achieving this is gradation.

Arguably the most familiar of all the principles, gradation is a gradual transition between opposites.  Light changes slowly to dark, large continuously becomes small, one color gently unfolds into another. Any visual element—whether size, shape, direction, line, value, hue, intensity, temperature or texture—can be gradated just as it can be contrasted.

Most of us probably learned in our first drawing class that we use value gradation to make an image appear three-dimensional, but this principle is also a useful tool for unifying a painting.  An underlying value gradation ties together things that would otherwise compete.

In his painting, "Growing Tall," Colin Page has used this strategy, unifying an otherwise unwieldy subject.

Colin Page      Oil on Canvas     "Growing Tall"

There’s a lot of activity here-- titillating flecks of light, rapid directional contrasts, quick gestures—but if you squint your eyes at Page’s painting and concentrate on the darks and lights, you’ll discover an underlying gradation in value.

Page's painting in grays and blurred.

And he's used gradation in at least two other ways: look at the colors as they appear from the bottom to the top—blue-green, green, yellow green, yellow, orange—they all transition in the same order as the colors on the color wheel.

Now shift your attention to the texture of the grasses. Larger, rather specific strokes appear at the bottom, and then strokes become progressively smaller and less defined as they move toward the top.

A portion of Page's painting in grays

Value, hue and texture all have been gradated, letting us be captivated by the diversity of contrasts rather than confused.

Gradation occurs naturally within the mechanics of our eyes.  Our visual perception interprets things as if they gradually change as they recede from where we are.  Things become smaller in size, lighter in value, weaker in intensity, and less distinct in texture and detail.  John Burton's painting, "Festival at La Tirana," adroitly illustrates this by exaggerating the principle.

John Burton    OIl    "Festival at La Tirana"

Notice how within each subsequent figure these four elements--size, value, intensity and texture--gradually change so that the most distant figure is barely defined.

Carolyn Anderson uses the gradation principle in a similar way, but more strategically.

Rather than follow the gradation of subjects as we would normally perceive them, Anderson has guided our attention to where she wants us to look by more clearly defining the children on the right and the second horse from the left and gradating away from the discernible characteristics of these images so that, by power of suggestion, we can identify images in the distance even though their shapes are hardly identifiable.

Upper right section of Anderson's painting

As you can see, unlimited creative possibilities abound for using gradation as a tool in painting.  Whether the artist's goal is realism or something else, exciting and intriguing possibilities abound and more unified paintings will most likely be the results.

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

Note:  This tutorial is a revision of one I wrote for Empty Easel, September 9, 2008.

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

Say It With Strategy

What composing strategy do these four paintings follow?

Carolyn Anderson     Untitled

Qiang Huang    Demo at Sacramento

Joe Paquet     "Green Sea"

Jennifer McChristian     "Smoking Sugar"

Every genre has a host of methods for dealing with space. Individual artists seem to gravitate towards using particular strategies that fit their personal sensibilities.  Some poets, for example,  find their most authentic expression through the sonnet while others are more at home with haiku:  a simple three part poem of seventeen sound units can be every bit as powerful as fourteen lines in iambic pentameter.  Painters, too, select divisions of space that best communicate their ideas.   

All four of the paintings above use the same kind of spatial division--in each of them, areas occupied by the most activity make up one major shape while the background for that activity occupies the other. I find it intriguing that in two of these paintings, even though their subject matter is entirely different, there is an almost identical spatial division.

I have abstracted from these two paintings that spatial division and put it into Diagram A below.  The dark area represents main activity and the light shape represents background.

Diagram A

Can you find the two paintings from which I abstracted these patterns?   

The two remaining paintings share the same principle in a reverse pattern.  They, too, employ totally different subjects.  Here are abstract diagrams for these two works:

Diagram B

If you chose Anderson and McChristain for Diagram A, you are correct, leaving Diagram B as abstractions from Paquet and Huang.

All four of these paintings follow the L-shape composing strategy, meaning the artists have arranged the activity so that our eyes are guided through an L or reverse L directional path.

Subjects we consider for painting have a multitude of inherent qualities, giving us abundant choices of how we will compose them into our paintings.  We artists select what we will include and choose how we arrange and interpret what we see to express our response to the subjects.  The beauty of this is its power for giving artists so many options for manifesting their individual differences.

Rule Breakers

    Artists by nature tend to be rebels, especially against rules. Some have even created art movements by defying conventional rules. We need only glance back to the mid-19th century to find in the Impressionists the most scandalous rule-breakers in art history. They radically disobeyed the conventional rules of their time and eventually became the heroes of our day. But it was conventions they rebelled against, not composition principles.

Claude Monet   "Woman with a Parasol"  1875
Member of Impressionist Movement

There is a difference between conventional rules and principles of composition.  A conventional rule is an accepted guideline set forth by agreement among artists, but a principle of composition is a functioning law of physics that gives an art work order so that it can be read without confusion.  

One of these conventions that is not itself a principle tells us never to place an area of interest in the center of a painting.  This convention can be successfully defied by an artist who understands the principle of balance. Balance is a law of the physics with respect to equilibrium:  elements visually heavier on one side will overpower lighter weighted elements on the other.  

One way to defy the "never center" convention is to use symmetrical balance which makes one side of an art work a mirror image of the other.  Painter Georgia O'Keefe employed this principle in her painting, "Cow's Skull:  Red, White and Blue" and Leonardo da Vinci used in in his "The Last Supper."

Georgia O'Keefe    "Cow's Skull:  Red, White & Blue"    1931

Leonardo da Vinci    "The Last Supper"  Circa 1495

Another method for defying the convention of "never center" is to use radial balance where elements circle around a central area.  Henri Matisse used this principle in his painting, "Dance I" and Albrecht Durer used it in his etching, "The Lamentation"

Henri Matisse     "Dance I"    1909

Albrecht Durer  "The Lamentation"  1513

But the convention of "avoiding placement in the center" presumes assymetrical balance where elements on either side of an art work's center are of different sizes, colors, textures, shapes and values.  Nevertheless, an artist who has a working knowledge of the balance principle can find a way to place an area of interest in the center of the work, offsetting it with active elements around it.


Winslow Homer uses this tactic in his painting, “The Herring Net.”  Even though the event is right in the middle of the canvas, our eyes are drawn away from the center by the fish in the net on the lower right, the light reflecting on the water on the right side, angles of the oars, and the weight of the fellow hanging onto the front left of the boat.  And boats in the distance as well as the floating barrel in front help distribute the visual weight away from the center of the format.  

Winslow Homer    "The Herring Net:    1885

Mary Whyte did a similar thing in her painting, "Red."  The face of the woman is located dead center, but the bright colors of the hat and dress, the textures and movement of feathers in the hat, the weight of the dark background shape and the chair in the opposing corner, all carry a visual weight that balances the painting, enabling a visual flow throughout.

Mary Whyte   "Red"   2008

"Rules of thumb" do work to prevent troublesome confusions from spoiling an otherwise well done painting, but artists need not be bound by them if a clever use of a principle can override the rule.  In fact, the more thoroughly we artists are able to understand how principles work, the more options we give ourselves for not only defying convention, but for finding creative ways to make our works more compelling.

Shadows Speak

If on a dark night the lights go out, there we are in total darkness unable to see a thing.  But can you imagine the dark going out? The impact would be the same--without dark, we can see no more than without light. To see we have to have both light and dark working in concert.  (Now, there's a metaphor!)

Light comes from a source, but its absence is the origin of darkness.  Without light darkness floods in from every direction, but darkness is given form called shadow when a light source is cast upon an object. Not only does shadow help define the object's shape, but it extends beyond that shape continuing in the direction of the light beams to create a cast shadow.  Even when light is diffused the location of shadows tell us the direction of the light's source.  In the photo below, faint shadows beneath the bird inform us that there is some light above it.

But when light is not diffused, we see two distinct images for each shape in it's path:  the object itself and its cast shadow. Direct light beams cause the cast shadow to bend and travel along the contours of anything in its path.  That shadow tells us the angle of the light beams, the shape of the object casting the shadow, and the contours of the surface on which the shadow is cast.

"Samwise"   Terracotta sculpture   Howard G. Hanson

It's the cast shadow that tells the story of this snow covered landscape.

If we switch our attention from the fact of snow and images in the snow towards the shadows themselves, we realize that it's those shadows that tell us about a slight incline of the driveway,  a rise on the right side and a drop-off on the left, that somebody has been walking in the snow and that there are trees nearby.

In fact, often the cast shadows will tell us about their surroundings without their images being visible.  Look at Karin Jurick's painting of a bike rider.

Now look at it (forgive me Karin) without the biker.

If while constructing a painting we ignore the specifics of a cast shadow, whether caused by direct or diffused light, we lose an important essence of the story that those particulars tell and we cause the painting to communicate that something is missing.   Rather than being added as an afterthought, carefully crafted cast shadows integrated into the painting from the beginning become an essential part of the painting's story.

Mathematics and Art

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.