The Power of Direction

For ages, artists have been using directional movement to compose their paintings.  Directional movement is any visual movement in an art work created by a line or by the alignment of shapes or color or value contrast.

The classic is the triangle on which artists depend for giving both balance and dynamics to their work.   From before Rembrandt to after Norman Rockwell, today's art collections are filled with paintings whose compositional structure is some variation of this directional movement scheme.

"Storm on the Sea of Galilee"   Rembrandt van Rijn
1633

In this Rembrandt painting, the upper diagonal of the triangle is created by line, but the lower two are created by the alignment of shapes.

 "Fishing"     Norman Rockwell      1971

In  this Norman Rockwell painting, the lower side of the triangle is created by line with the other two sides being created by the alignment of shapes.

There is a variation on the scheme that is also found in this Rockwell piece.

Opposing diagonals that counter balance each other

There are opposing diagonals and accompanying verticals and horizontals.

Vertical and horizontal that give stability.

Because a single diagonal movement feels unstable, like when we are falling, some other movement is needed to give it balance. An opposing diagonal can do this, so can a strong horizontal or vertical or a combination of these.  In Rockwell's piece we see all of these at work.

Look at these two paintings by John Burton.

"Changing Tide"       Oil

"Dance of the Lupine"     Oil

Two totally different subjects with the same directional movement.

Look at how the strong diagonals are balanced with both a horizontal and a vertical.

It works in all genre whether landscape, still life or portraiture. And the exciting thing is that the direction of light can be set up to reinforce one of the directions.   Qiang Huang is masterful at doing this.

"Still and Alive"       Oil

Here's the theoretical explanation of how it works:  Both the horizontal and vertical direction give visual stability.  The horizontal serves to calm things down, to give a feeling of being at rest; the vertical gives anchor and a fulcrum for balance.  A diagonal, though, gives energy and motion.  That's why verticals and horizontals are often used to stabilize a piece containing many diagonals or other energetic elements.

It all goes back to nature, to our psychology and the physics of our bodies.  When we are in a horizontal position we are at rest, in a vertical position we are anchored to the surface on which we are standing, but in a diagonal position without any support, we're most likely falling.  

Once again we see how the principles of composition are live forces rather than baggage to be dealt with or ignored.

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.

Still Playing With Balance

When I was a kid growing up in rural north Georgia, we made our own see-saws with a long board across a wooden sawhorse. Two kids, one on either end of the board, and we were off for a fun ride. Only problem was if one kid was a lot heavier than the other, she got the short end of the board. That meant the lighter weight kid got a higher ride and therefore having a lot more fun. We knew instinctively that the seesaw wouldn't balance if we didn't adjust the location of the board on the sawhorse according to the difference in the kids' weights.

When we're dealing with asymmetrical balance in our painting (as opposed to symmetrical in last week's post), we've got the same problem as kids on a seesaw. So what are we talking about? What makes visual weight and what is visual balance?

In picture making, we've got horizontal balance, (that's the seesaw type), vertical balance (the kind we experience when we're standing straight up) and radial balance (that's like a bicycle wheel where the outward forces pull toward the center and vice versa). All these are a part of the visual balance we deal with in painting. They're put into play by where we place things, their sizes, proportions, physical characteristics and directions.

That's a bunch of stuff, right? Well, just consider it labeling. It's really about how the equilibrium feels in a painting when you look at it. We've got an inborn sense about that and after all, it's where we place things that is the biggest issue.

Look at this painting by Robert Genn ("In A Moscow Cafe" Acrylic)
First, I'll draw a line down the middle so we can see how the images are placed in relation to the center.

Notice how most of the man's image appears on the left side of the painting, yet it feels balanced. Why? With the man's face turned towards the left and with most of the content of the painting on the left, we should feel slightly topsy-turvy, but we don't. Why is that?

Notice the picture on the wall placed at the top right corner, most of which is outside of the painting? And look at those interesting edges on the man's sleeve. I'm going to take away these two things and let you see what happens to the balance.

Now, see how our eyes go to the man's face and either shoot off to the left of the painting or hang around with the man's face and the newspaper.

It appears Genn was playing with horizontal balance. The man's face turned toward the side of the newspaper closest to the left edge gives a visual pull in that direction, but the strong light on his hand makes a counter pull toward the right. The interested edges along the sleeve do the same, then the picture at the top going off the upper right hand side gives that final additional visual weight to balance the whole piece. Wow!

Now look back at Robert's painting as he meant it to be and you'll see what I'm talking about.

In coming weeks I'll continue with vertical and radial balance. Meanwhile, prowl around works of accomplished artists and sleuth out their balancing strategies.

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Playing With Balance

Balance is equilibrium. We've all been thrown off balance, whether physically, emotionally, spiritually or psychologically. It's uncomfortable, we don't like it. We need balance and we seek it in every area of our lives.

From the beginning, our need for balance found its way into painting. Even the cave artists demonstrated a strong sense of balance and over the centuries, artists have identified and worked with two major kinds of balance, symmetrical and asymmetrical.

In symmetrical balance in painting, the focal point is centered with each side of the piece being, more or less, a mirror image of the other. It is therefore symmetrical. Achieving asymmetrical balance in painting is totally different, depending upon our sense of balance to guide how we place our images and how we control their size, shape, edges, color, direction, texture and value.

Symmetrical balance, though, can be more than simply placing images on one side of the painting and making a mirror image of them on the other. Artists have traditionally played with symmetrical balance to see how far they could stretch the concept and still keep the feeling of symmetry.

Leonardo da Vinci's 15th century painting, "The Last Supper," is our most familiar example of an artist's creative use of symmetrical balance.

The Last Supper by Leonardo Da Vinci 1496 to 1498
in the refectory of the Dominican convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie.

The Christ image is absolutely centered. The architectural shapes in the background are mirrored images though one side is in shadow and the other in light. The table is symmetrical. Slight variations occur in the people images. The size of the left grouping is the same as the size of the group on the right. The direction is horizontal, thus the same. The most variation is found in placement of color and in the arrangement of the figures themselves.

Raphael's "School of Athens" is another example of using symmetrical balance with slight variation.

Italian Renaissance artist Raphael , circa 1510 and 1511

Like Leonardo, Raphael has used the architecture to create the mirror. It's within the people images that he pushes variation. Notice the group on the right almost fit into a rectangular shape whereas the group on the left tend toward a triangular arrangement.

David took this idea yet a step further in his "Oath of Horatti.". He actually breaks the symmetry with the subject matter but uses symmetry in the architectural background.

Jacques-Lois David The Oath of The Horati 1784

The fun part of compositional principles is playing around with them, using them as tools rather than as rules. Next week I'll show some ways that artists had fun playing with asymmetrical balance.