Considering Economy

I've always been intrigued by how much can be said with so little when the saying of it is in the hands of a master.  There are volumes contained in Emily Dickenson's simple lines, The soul selects its own society, Then shuts the door... or in the simple Rembrandt drawing of a woman sleeping.  Ten simple words describing an entire mode of living;  less than three dozen strokes expressing a human in restful sleep.

"A Woman Sleeping"   Rembrandt van Rijn  c.1655

Let’s dust off the economy principle: say more with less.  It is easy for the artist to get caught up in multiple images and excessive details, but doing so can cause a feeling of disorganization or visual confusion.  Sometimes the work is stronger because of what was left out rather than what was included:  when we provide just enough information for the brain to become engaged, we can enable the viewer to participate, to mentally fill in what is not there.

Let's look at how economy is used by three artists from three different time periods.

Jan Vermeer, 17th c. Dutch painter, utilized economy by simplifying value range and shape patterns. Take a look at the simplicity of shapes and values in his Young Woman with a Water Pitcher.

Jan (Johannes) Vermeer   Young Woman with a Water Pitcher   c. 1660

In the close up below, we can see more clearly how each shape is defined by a simple light and a simple dark, uncluttered with details.  Not only that, but if you squint you can see how the value areas are simplified:  rather than a wide range of darks, all darks are closely related in value.  The same is true with his lights.  Squinting reveals a clear light/dark pattern of shapes.

Two hundred years later John Singer Sargent, too, found ways to say more with less.  In his painting, Parisian Beggar Girl, Sargent uses simple value ranges and shape patterns much like Vermeer, but defines these with gestural brushstokes, giving each shape its own directional movement.

John Singer Sargent   A Parisian Beggar Girl  c.1880

In this close up, the movement of brushstrokes is as evident as the shapes themselves, yet clean and simple enough not to overpower the shapes they are describing.

Jump forward another hundred years to painter, Carolyn Anderson, who like Vermeer and Sargent uses simplified shapes and close value relationships, who like Sargent uses gestural brushstrokes to define the movement of shapes, but who takes these a step further with lost edges, merging shapes into one another while keeping their felt delineation, allowing the viewer to fill in what Anderson has left out.

Carolyn Anderson   Portrait of a Man  c.2008

In the boxed areas, look at how the hair and both shoulders merge into the background:  three examples of how adroitly Anderson simplifies with lost edges.

Even though their work spans more than three hundred years Vermeer, Sargent and Anderson are like-minded artists when it comes to knowing how to use economy, showing us how masters utilize the familiar old adage:  less is more.

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Creating Within an Intention: Rabatment

What do the sonnet, the waltz and a rabatment have in common?

Each is a form--a pattern for how parts of a creation will fall into place. Each is like a seed that will be an oak tree, an egg that will become a hawk, or a ball of clay that will be turned into a vase.  The pattern is determined, but what gets created within that pattern has yet to evolve.

Another way to say it is that time-tested forms give an artist an opportunity to create within an intention.  In painting, we select a subject, then we have the option to apply a form to help determine how we place the images. The form we choose is our intention for how we will communicate the subject we have chosen.   The rabatment of the rectangle is a classic form for creating within an intention.

A rabatment is the square found on either end of a rectangle.  For each horizontal rectangle, there is a right rabatment and a left rabatment.  For each vertical, there is an upper rabatment and a lower rabatment

When choosing the rabatment as our intention for composing a painting, we have all sorts of creative options for making it work by assigning the inside and the outside of the rabatment each a distinctive role to play towards how the painting communicates.

One way to do this is to place the most active images within the rabatment itself, then insert an "onlooker" within the remainder of the rectangle, creating a structure that engages the viewer to identify with an  image on the outside looking in.  Here's how I did this in a 2007 watercolor of blue jays.

Dianne Mize    "Committee Meeting"    Watercolor

 As you can see, I placed the two conversationalists within the left rabatment and the onlooker outside of it.

Another scheme is to place the major activity inside the rabatment, then to lead into it from the outside like  Carla O'Connor has done in her painting, "Tatoos."

Carla O'Connor     "Tatoos"    Watercolor    

Probably the most classic use of rabatment is to show a major theme inside the rabatment and minor theme on the outside, as illustrated by Robert Genn's painting, "Brittany Port."

Robert Genn    "Brittany Port"   Acrylic

Wassily Kandinsky, a 20th century abstractionist, made a similar use of this plot in his painting, "Composition X."

Wassily Kandinsky    "Composition X"     Oil

It's always refreshing when an artist takes a traditional form and uses it with an unexpected twist.  Mary Whyte did this in her painting, "Passages," where she puts the major theme outside the rabatment, making the rabatment support the theme of the painting rather than the other way around.

Mary White    "Passages"     Watercolor

Like the sonnet is to poetry and the waltz is to music, the rabatment in pictorial composition has endless possibilities for exploring ways we can enable our paintings to communicate.

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Visual Bridges

Whether enabling us to cross over a deep ravine, a small stream or twelve lanes of traffic, we depend upon bridges to get from one place to another.  They take on many forms-- from a plank of lumber to vast expanses of concrete, from woven ropes to lengths of steel cable.  Nothing stops us in our tracks more abruptly than a bridge taken out.  Yet we cross them daily without conscious awareness that they are even there.

What do bridges have to do with composing paintings?  They are absolutely necessary for the eye to stay engaged in a painting.  A visual bridge, or transition as it's called in artspeak, is any method for enabling the eye to move smoothly from one area to another.  Gradation is a visual bridge:  it transitions gradually from one opposite element to another; soft edges are visual bridges; they enable a shape to join into, rather than be isolated from, its surroundings; lost edges are visual bridges:  they merge shapes into a potentially intriguing visual journey.

Of these three, let's take a closer look at lost edges.

Lost edges occur when, rather than totally delineating a shape, the artist allows a shape's edge to disappear  into the adjacent space.  Below is a simplified example of a lost edge.

 Because our minds tend to fill in the blanks when information is absent, it is not necessary for a shape to be completely delineated in order for us to read it.  Our tendency towards closure causes us to become more engaged while filling in the gaps when information is missing, thus we are participating in the work.  So by creating lost edges, engaging the viewer's involvement in completing the image, the artist is making the painting more interesting to look at.

One of the best examples I've seen of  lost edges used in abundance is Pat Weaver's watercolor painting, "Racetrack."  Throughout the piece, we see light from one shape merging into light within another.

Pat Weaver     "Racetrack"     Watercolor

Here I've drawn red arrows through a few of Weaver's lost edges.  Examine these, then glance back at the painting above and notice how each of these serves as a visual bridge.

Whereas most of Weaver's lose edges are light into light, Qiang Huang effectively uses dark into dark in his still life oil painting below.  Notice how the shadows on the apples merge into their cast shadows and how these merge into the background.  Then look at how he unifies the bunch of grapes with bridges, defining only enough shapes for the viewer to read it as grapes, then look at how their darks are bridged by the darks on the jar behind them into the dark bottle.

Qiang Huang   Demo at Melbourne   Oil

Using lost edges as a visual bridge can unify a landscape painting giving it both atmosphere and depth.  Marc Hanson is especially adroit at this as illustrated in his painting, "July Mill Pond."

Marc Hanson    "July Mill Pond"     Oil

Without visual bridges each individual image in a painting will be isolated in its own space, causing a stiffness to the work and causing it to be void of atmosphere.  But the lost edge's unique function of engaging the viewer's participation makes it more likely that the viewer will want to look at the painting more than once.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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