A Game of Inches

I covered sports for more years than I care to mention,  and no matter which sport I covered, invariably some sports figure would throw out the quote -- "It's a game of inches."  You could bet your life's fortune that you'd hear that at least once a week, if not once a day. Sometimes more than once a day!

Well -- now's it's my turn!

The focus of this blog is composition. There have been many books written on composition. There will be many more. The basics never really change. Most artists are taught about the Golden Rule. It goes under a variation of names (Also called the Golden Mean or the Golden Ratio) and the origin of the rule varies. Essentially, the Golden Rule is a mathematical formula that says design is aesthetically pleasing to the eye based upon the principle of 1.6180339887... 

I'm sure you figured that out and what that means, right? The easiest way to visualize it, truly, is the Rule of Thirds, seen in the image below.

Composition Guide

The image to the left is the one used by many artists with a slight variation. The Golden Ratio says "A" (the first "two third" sections in blue) + "B" (the final "third section") = C. If you continue to divide each one of those sections into the "thirds" concept, then you still stay within the Golden Mean. So you can have an infinite number of "golden rules."

I don't know how many artists truly do the mathematical formula. There was one study in 1999 of 565 pieces of art done by a number of great artists and hardly any followed the Golden Rule. Though Georges Seurat (the Father of Pointillism and a subject of a previous blog posting) actually followed it religiously.

My Composition Guide is something that I "conceptually" follow. In almost every painting and drawing that I do, I note, either physically or mentally, the exact center point of the canvas -- or the dotted red line. The circle is the dead center. If I place my "Star of the Show" right there in the center, the painting is not going to work. Hence we move to the grid of thirds. The four circles where the four solid lines cross are more pleasing to the viewer's eye. And that's usually done on the subconscious level. It's not just art, but a design element in packaging, advertisement and all things visual. 

With the groundwork done, I have some rules for Composition that are not listed anywhere that I know of other than what I've picked up over the years. Much of that has come from designing newspaper pages.

The First Rule -- that I try to apply always -- is the viewer's eye travels from Upper Left to Lower Right. It's an instinctive reaction. Build your painting accordingly.

The Second Rule is "Determine the Star of the Show". There should always be one primary focus of any painting. Place "the star" somewhere on the four circles -- preferably the upper left or lower right one (so as to follow First Rule).

The Third Rule is another newspaper lesson i learned ad nauseum from a Photo Editor I worked with at The Kentucky Post. "Big Art -- I want Big Art! And crop it TIGHT!" ... So here I am cropping a high school running back carrying a football around the end and I have a nice shot cropped to show the flow of the play. "That's not going to work! Crop it here and crop it there! And make it BIGGER!" And I went back to my desk muttering under my breath and looking at this close up that looked dreadful.

When the photo came out on the printed page later that day ... sure enough. The darned thing worked beautifully. Lesson learned. Though I fought it a lot on a daily basis!


So now I try to focus and eliminate the superfluous. Those three elements may not seem like "composition", but in actuality, composition it what makes the picture "work". What makes it aesthetically pleasing. Maybe better explained as "elements of composition."

This gets me back to my "Game of Inches" quote ..

Image #1

 
When I was drawing "The Irony of Me" for the Mason "Self" show, I thought the piece was finished in Image #1 except for the background.

I intentionally wanted the paintbrush to bleed off the matboard. (Which goes back to the First Rule of Upper left to Lower Right). The border drawn around the image on the matboard is exactly 1 inch in from the actually end of the board.

The focus of the drawing (my eyes looking out at the viewer) is actually slightly above the bottom third line, but below the true horizontal center line.

Something didn't "feel" right and I wasn't sure what it was until the next day ...

Image #2

As I was filling in the background (not one of my favorite things to do), I figured out what was wrong. In order to make the drawing look like some one outside the drawing was actually painting it, the wrist on the hand had to go outside the border and bleed off the page as well.

Is that a composition move? I will absolutely defend that that "one inch" of artwork was a matter of composition that made the painting work much better.

Art, like sports, in this case is a game of inches. An inch or two here or there can truly make or break the composition of a painting or how it "reads" for the viewer.




Apparently the painting worked for the people who attended the "Self" show and the subsequent two weeks of voting for "People's Choice" Award, as my painting was recently the recipient of that award. People's Choice Awards mean a lot to me for a couple reasons -- 1) what I'm doing is appreciated by art lovers; and 2) it means I'm communicating with the viewer. The composition works!

Working in Progress

Oil Painting Landscape in the works

I've actually finished three paintings since the last blog. I will post them next time since this blog has already gone on far too long. There's three other paintings in the works and I've actually started the first of -- hopefully -- two colored pencil pieces for the fall CPSA Chapter Show. I will show that later down the road when it actually looks like something more than a few layers of colored pencil.

One of the oil paintings I'm working on is to the right and I've had the great pleasure of working once a week on that painting with one of my best friends, Todd Price.

There's at least three or four more sessions to go and I have to focus more on "the star of the show". 


 
 

Artists Lounge

"Lounge" is used as a noun, not a verb ... though in some cases I have to admit the verb form applies to me more often than it should!

This is just a brief posting to further explain an announcement I made earlier today on my Facebook page (mbpgrafix).

I was very happy to learn over the weekend that I received Juried acceptance into a Mason, OH artists' cooperative called the Artists Lounge.  The co-op is located in the Pop Revolution Art Gallery at 105 East Main St. in Mason, OH.

I actually came across an artists' co-op this past fall when I was in San Antonio, TX. As part of their artists community, there was a building dedicated to Southwestern Texas area artists who gathered together to rent a building and run the facility as a group. Each weekend, one of the more than 25 or 30 artists there, has a day-long demo of their artwork.

The Grand Opening of the Artists Lounge will be Saturday as part of the "Self" juried art show that also will be taking place at the gallery from 5-8 p.m.

One of the really nice things thing about the Artists Lounge is that the storefront/gallery is actually open Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m.-to-6 p.m. and Saturday from 11 a.m.-to-3 p.m.

I do have a wall space there that features some of my artwork which is for sale.

The artists co-op will also feature Open House events every Second Thursday from 6-9 p.m., beginning March 13.

It's a very nice facility located in a great part of town with convenient restaurants nearby.

NEXT BLOG: I promised to do the next blog on composition. I haven't forgotten that, I just wanted to get this announcement posted before the Grand Opening this weekend. Hopefully, I will see you there!