VALUE SHAPE EDGES and TEXTURE
Below is an outline that defines SHAPES, VALUE, EDGES, and TEXTURE:
I. SHAPES:
A. Drawing and draftsmanship. Think accuracy to your design, not necessarily to your subject.
1. Compose your painting! By being in control of your shapes and their relationships to other shapes, you are designing your composition. Noone will be seeing your painting next to the actual reference, so make your painting stand on its own. Dont be a slave to your subject!
a. “S” shaped composition. If it’s barely there, push it.
b. “L” shaped composition. Large shape on the entire left or right side of the composition taking the viewer’s eye to the other side of the picture for the focal point.
c. ”Steelyard” composition. Balancing your picture through the use of assymetry in the size of the value masses.
d. “O” or “Circle” composition. Looking in between or through shapes for the payoff or focal point.
e. ”Pattern” composition. An interesting pattern created by Dark and Light values shapes.
f. “Diagonal” composition. A design in which the prevailing lines are angular.
g. “Golden Mean” composition. A mathematical composition thought to be the perfect placement of areas of interest based on angles drawn from the corners of the painting and intersecting at right angles.
B. THREE VALUE SYSTEM.
a. Light Values, Medium Values, and Dark Values
b. Asymetrical Balance In The Real Estate. One Value mass should take up more real estate on the canvas than the other two combined.
c. Asymetrical Balance In Relative Values. Middle Value should be painted closer in value to Darker OR Lighter.
C. Every shape different and dynamically interwoven. Think puzzle pieces, but all of the peices being of different size.
D. Create depth by drawing shapes increasingly flatter as they approach the Horizon Line. Think of a pancake at your feet versus a pancake at eye level.
E. Beware of the tendency to create both STAGNANT RHYTHMS and TANGENTS.
1. STAGNANT RHYTHMS: when shapes in your composition take on equal sizes and spaces creating a rhythm that is stagnant. For example a stand of trees all placed equal distant from each other and of similar girth. This will be less interesting and visually stimulating than placing unique shapes between trees of different sizes and shapes. Keeping things unique and random aids in creating a natural feel of a place. The only exception that I can think of is when one is painting a manmade objects or an urban scene where windows, doors, or things of this nature present themselves in this way.
2. TANGENTS: when a shape on your picture plane ends right where either another shape starts or right at the edge of the canvas where the frame will be. Always move the shape so that it ends within the compostion or goes definitively off the picture, or definitively over/underlap other shapes within the composition. This concept is difficult to explain without some visual aids.
II. VALUE:
A. Squint to see VALUE and their relationships to other VALUES. Creating the illusion of light and depth requires the deft use of VALUE RELATIONSHIPS.
1. When designing your picture think first in terms of 2(two) values, the LIGHT FAMILY and the SHADOW FAMILY, or in the case of an overcast day, the LIGHT VALUES and the DARK VALUES. There is no stronger way to state something than the sillouhette.
B. There is no stronger tool in describing form than value.
C. COLOR IS VALUE!! It’s the reason I dont have a heading on COLOR. If you are not in the correct VALUE when mixing a color, then you definitely do NOT have the right color.
D. Through the use of Value and Color, one can create depth in a painting.
1. Atmospheric Perspective.
2. Cool and Warm TEMPERATURE relationships.
E. Try to design your picture with the use of five or less main VALUES.
III. EDGES:
A. Squint to see edges. Edges are one of the most misunderstood concepts in representational painting. Edges, and their infinite variety, occur between the shapes in your picture plane. Using them to your advantage can create paintings that have “POP.” As an artist, there is probably not a more powerful tool in guiding a viewer to places in the painting that one chooses to emphasize.
C. Edges vary between razer sharp, and totally lost.
1. Sharper edges draw the eye like a quick motion in your peripheral vision draws your attention.
2. The eye finds rest in passages on the picture plane where edges have been softened.
3. Interest and life like illusions can be achieved through deft use of lost and found edges.
D. Overlaps are created by EDGES. Overlaps in a painting will sell depth better than atmospheric perspective or cool and warm relationships any day.
E. SOFT EDGES.
1. A soft edge as in the turning of a form can be achieved by blending paint on the canvas or by incrimentally making small value and temperature changes as the form turns. In the latter there will be a sharp edge between the small shifts in value, but from a distance, it will read as a soft and more life like transition.
IV. TEXTURE:
A. The different ways you apply paint to your canvas can achieve varied results.
1. Thin and sometimes even transparent darks next to thicker applied lit areas can have a very dynamic and realistic look.
2. Pallete knives can achieve smoother looking passages with razer sharp edges.
3. Verticle strokes of paint applied with a brush appear darker than horizontal strokes of the same value because in a gallery the lights usually come from the ceiling and are bouncing off of the horizontal ridges created from the brush stroke.
4. A brush can apply paint in more ways than the obvious drag. One can push the brush, twist the brush, glob the paint on and pull away leaving icing like plumes, flick the brush spitting little paint pieces on the canvas like Jackson Pollock. One can push, pull, or twist the brush with varying amounts of paint for infinite results. Invite the collaboration with the Universe!!
Impressionistic Realism is the style in which I work. It is a versatile yet challenging style where the poetry of the subject is depicted, detail is implied, and I often employ the visual vocabulary and experience of the viewer to “finish” areas of the canvas in their own unique way. Through design my paintings are best...
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