Lists and "Thanks, Making a Mark"

If you haven't already discovered Katherine Tyrrell's brilliant blog "Making a Mark," you must and not because she recognized this blog among her top five FAQs and Answers Really Useful blogs. Katherine's blog is one of the best experiences I've discovered within the blogshere.

Thanks, Katherine. It's quite an honor to get this recognition.

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When I was teaching in bricks and mortar, I enjoyed opening the more advanced classes with a composition lesson. At times I'd choose from one of the two major art magazines (I'll refrain from naming either) a painting that was a bit less than successful (making one wonder how it got published), then we'd analyze why the painting didn't work. At other times, I'd pick a well done painting and we would examine all the dynamics that made it work. It didn't take long for my students to realize that good painting involves much more than just copying images. They looked forward to these little mini lessons and so did I.

For them, I developed a guide which I called a "think sheet" and they called the "cheat sheet." It's not much more than a set of lists, and it's purpose is simply to jog the memory as to possibilities.

To begin the New Year, I want to share my "cheat sheet" with you. Enjoy and Happy New Year!

A Brief Outline of How the Visual Language Works
(A Think Chart for Visual Composing)
"We construct images, we compose art work."

The Elements (Our Vocabulary)
Line
Shape
Size
Direction
Texture
Value
Hue
Intensity
Temperature

The ACTION principles (Things we can do with the vocabulary to make it work)
Select and Place
Gradate or Modulate
Alternate
Contrast
Vary
Repeat
Make Similar
Elaborate
Economize
Isolate
Overlap
Juxtapose
Find and use perspective
Find and use angle of shadow/light
Create dominance

The RESULTS (What We Want To Get)
Pattern to avoid randomness
Balance to prevent one-sidedness
Order to overcome chaos
Harmony to stay in tune
Rhythm to avoid being static
Proportion to set relationships
Transition to enable movement
Form to provide structure
Focal Point and Visual Path to guide the eye
Emphasis to avoid being erratic

Toward our ULTIMATE GOALS
UNITY to avoid fragmentation
PURPOSE to negate aimlessness

The CAUTION principles (Things to avoid along the way)
Tangents
Sore Thumbs
Aimless Centering
Disconnectedness

Copyright 2009, Dianne Mize

Avoiding Percy's "Sore Thumb"

After my “Isolation” post on August 8, I received a request from one of my students asking about how to use isolation without ending up with a sore thumb. She wants to know “How does one determine when to use it and use it effectively within a given subject? What particular things are to be avoided?”

First, why would we isolate anything in the first place. In the delightful Percy’s Principles of Composition, Marvin Bartel’s first principle is “Avoid a sore thumb,” which is where the concern about isolation begins. So why take the risk?

Keep in mind that isolation is a strategy to set a thing apart, detach it, give it solitude. It is available to us, but we would not want to use in every painting we do--unless you're Edward Hopper :). We would use it only if we want to call attention to something really important to the meaning of the whole painting or if we want a special emphasis somewhere in the painting.

When Hopper isolated, his entire painting centers on whatever was isolated. So how did Hopper, the master of effective isolation, manage to avoid a sore thumb every time? Look his Hotel Window.

The seated woman is what the painting is about. Hopper has isolated her by creating the extremely light face, hands and legs within a dark surrounding and by locating her within a large empty space. But he has used two strategies to keep her from being a sore thumb: (1) he’s kept the value of her clothing very close to the values surrounding her, (2) he’s tied in the light of her face, hands and legs with the accents of light around the window and on the drapes as well as the very light walls and painting hanging on the wall.

Now, with apologies to Mr. Hopper, I’m going to change that and make her clothes bright red.

See, now it’s a sore thumb.

Okay, (and Mr. Hopper, I'm SO sorry!), I’m going to change it another way by taking out the light accents, by darkening the walls and removing the painting.

See, it’s a sore thumb again. So that tells us that another way to unify the isolated image to prevent the "sore thumb" syndrome is by repeating elsewhere in the painting something contained within the image or repeating something from the rest of the painting inside the isolated image. My apologies to Mr. Hopper, rest is soul, but my thanks to him for mastering isolation, making it possible for us to study what he did.

Now to the other reason we might want to isolate: to place a special emphasis somewhere in the painting. Look once again at Pat Weaver's little still life painting.

The red apple is a strong emphasis isolation. It isolates because it's totally different in color and in value from the onions in the painting, yet it is within the surroundings of similar subjects, is quite similar in size and shape to the onions, and the dark of its shadow blends with the dark on the plate while the highlight gets repeated all the other whites appearing in the painting. I called it strong emphasis because it is NOT what the painting is about, but equally important to the other subjects in the painting. Now with most hearty apologies to Pat, I'm going to change it to show you why this works.

Now it IS a sore thumb. The only relationship is size and shape, but because of the intensity of the red, it isolates severely. Now I'll do the opposite.

It loses interest altogether. We see by this change what an important role that red was playing. So, here a strong emphasis was key to the success and strength of the whole painting.

We don't have to be able to label strategies and principles in order to make good paintings. In fact, if we get too preoccupied with these, we can stifle the life out of our art work, but to develop a wisdom about aesthetics enables us as painters to put an extra sensitivity and graciousness in our work.

In this age with open acceptance of the "anything goes" attitude, I believe artists need to take the lead toward higher aesthetic standards. That's a good reason to know isolation

The Language

When we paint, we communicate through a rich visual language. Images speak, yes, but how we present them influences what they say. In their raw form each is in a context of a unique light and/or shadow. We can paint the image in strong light, in weak light, in strong shadow, in weak shadow. We can make the image light and it's surroundings dark, make it dark with it's surroundings light, make it include both lights and darks in a variety of surroundings. The same image repeated in a variety of lighting will communicate
differently. The element of our language making this happen we call "value". You know that. But had you considered it as a part of your language's vocabulary?

Our language's vocabulary includes value, hue, intensity, temperature, shape, size direction, lineand texture. These are the elements with which we "speak" as painters.