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Basic Concepts in Painting and Sculpture Part 1 Composition If you have ever worked on a newspaper, you will know that the first rule is to use the paper space wisely. A similar concept in fine art integrates this component with a sense of "balance." If all the action is happening on one side of the painting, it will feel like it is about to fall over on that side. Is the painting bottom-heavy or top-heavy? Or are the objects in the visual field (such as the front page of a newspaper, or the canvas of a painting) well distributed to give a sense of balance? Wise use of space and balance are called the composition. This is the first thing an artist should do when starting a work or art. They may need to move into a position that distributes the visual information wisely. They may need to add background material or foreground material to get everything balanced. Have you ever wondered why there is always a pair of slippers beneath a reclining female nude? The artist is using them to add visual information in the immediate foreground! Armed with this concept, you will be able to laugh and cry at the lengths (or lack thereof) which the artist has taken to balance the visual field. A further consequence of this concept is how the shapes of the objects line up with each other (like a puzzle piece) or fail to do so. Although the objects exist in three-dimensional space, we are considering how their visual information impacts the two-dimensional plane of the board. In this way, a two dimensional shape somewhere in the painting (such as a pattern on a floor or wall) can interact with a three dimensional form. Sometimes artists use basic forms and echo them in different places in the visual field, sometimes introducing variations like a fugue by Bach. A good example of this type of compositional dance is Newberry's Blithe, where the two-dimensional tapestry behind the woman echoes the curves of her body. The Three Pillars of Spatial Depth If you have ever looked at paintings from the Middle Ages, you will notice how the figures and scenes are all "flat." Renaissance artists later discovered how to project objects as human see them, where objects in the distance get smaller on the horizon and get closer to the line of sight as they move back in space. This is spatial depth due to perspective. Another way of creating spatial depth over long distances has to do with atmospheric effects. An object in the distance, such as a building, will have a shade of blue or gray because of all the air between the viewer and the object. (Since we can see far-off objects with lower focus, they are also slightly blurred.) This I call spatial depth due to atmosphere. There is a third, often overlooked, aspect to spatial depth which works well over very short distances. It has to do with contrast. For example, take a sheet of white paper and draw a sharp black line. Next to it, draw a slightly fuzzier gray line. In terms of spatial depth, the fuzzy gray line recedes behind the sharp line. Even if you had one eye, you would be able to see the three-dimensional space within the paper. When using colors, this kind of depth gets exponentially harder to do. The artist has to create color contrasts to bring objects forward in space, and color transparencies to push them back. Note that when I speak of transparency, I do not mean that you can see through any objects in the painting to the forms behind them, I mean that the colors are slightly blended together. There is a complex vision science behind painting that experimentally tests how different colors exist in space relative to one another. Some colors have a larger span of space, other colors a shorter span. This prompts the question: how do you know if something is in the distance or very close just due to color? You can't. Unless contrasts between "bright and dark" accompany color contrasts, you could theoretically reverse the distribution of all objects in the painting. This bright-and-dark contrast is due to how we can perceive objects closer to them with higher focus than objects further away. Higher focus leads to more contrast between bright and dark areas. This effect is minute enough to differentiate the spatial location of one finger from another, and large enough to span large rooms and landscapes. I have heard from an authoritive source that there are only on the order of two- hundred, artists in history who could use this last technique of spatial depth. In my experience, I have seen it used in about ten or fifteen artists, all but one of them recognized masters. Look for it in Da Vinci, Rafael, Michelangelo, Reubens, Rembrandt, Valesquez, Vermeer, the French Impressionists, Picasso, and Newberry. Things get even more complicated when you cast a light on the objects within the painting, and you have to balance bright-dark contrasts, color contrasts, and the gradual sweep of light from its source. Welcome to the complex science, and inner madness, of being a painter. Sweeping Forms Have you ever seen a sculpture that looks like it was about to move? You feel like it might suddenly burst into motion if you turn your back. It holds your eyes-- you watch it suspiciously and wait for something to happen. Your eyes flow over the cascading muscles and limbs. And you wonder what gives this piece its particular "umph." The key to understanding this effect is to locate pairs of eye-catching points-- such as the position of feet, the alignment of kneecaps, the location of hands, the direction of fingers, the axes of the waist and chest, the position of limb joints, the eyes, strands of hair-- and connect them with a twisting, sweeping plane. The intensity of the plane may vary across the figure(s) but usually it grows in a single direction of movement. The twisting plane may expand along this line of intensity or contract, depending on the pieces. In every sculpture sits a plot-- a sequence of events which exist in time but are held static in the bronze. The movement comes from the motion of your eyes as they follow the striking features. In a split-second glance, you will subconsciously experience the sweeping form without being able to identify its direction consciously. But if you take your time and carefully move your eyes over the piece, you can watch how the sculpture builds up and explodes in a denouement, in a resolution of interacting forms. The form may be straight like an arrow, it may be an upward spiral, it may be an arc or a loop-de-loop, but whatever it's twist and direction-- the result is an anticipated motion. You feel as if the sculpture is aimed and guided towards a single direction and that, in a split-second, the figures are going to move in that direction. Is the figure stagnant or shimmering with motion? Is the form falling towards the ground or launching into the air? Is it retracting into a ball or exploding outwards? The power and direction of a sweeping form play an important role in projecting the theme. Like Ayn Rand's concept of a plot-theme, a sweeping form which integrates the action and exemplifies a theme is one of the highest marks of great sculpture.
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