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!

 

The price is right ... maybe

Other than actually executing the artwork, the next most difficult thing artists have to do is pricing their own finished works.

Rarely do I see so much hand-wringing as when artists are discussing how should they put a price on their artwork.

Most of the time, we let our emotions get involved in the process. If the artist is particularly attached to the work, they have a tendency to overprice the piece. Then there's the lack of self-confidence issue where the artist thinks, "Well, why would they buy that from me?!" Subsequently, they price the piece too low.

If I price it too high, does the buyer think I'm an egomaniac? Or am I trying to impress a collector with the high price in order to create a false impression? If I price it too low, does the buyer think I am not proud of the piece, so why should they invest their money? Some artists underprice their work because they feel sorry that the buyer should spend that much money.

A few years back, I read a piece on the internet that made a lot of sense to me -- establish a formula and try to stick to it. I have used that as a guide and have adjusted it according to situations. Which sounds like I'm being wishy-washy, but I'm really not because there actually is a formula involved.

Marin (Unframed)

The formula should be $$$ x square inches of the painting. I usually set $5 or $6/square inch as my guide. Therefore, if the painting rendered is 14 x 18 (252 square inches), the price should be somewhere in the neighborhood of between $1,260-to-$1,512. This should be the unframed price of the artist's work.

Framing is an unknown cost for many artists. Some of us are fortunate enough to be able to frame their own work and that reduces the cost considerably. I am not one of those. In fact, the hardest thing for me to do is selecting a mat color for my drawings. Selecting the frame is another mind-numbing experience for me. 

I try to avoid specially made frames because that really rockets up the price of the framing. Thus, I find myself drawing pieces to fit pre-made frames. Or, I select a pre-made frame that works after the mat is cut to fit.

Framing has to be worked in to the formula of pricing.

Again, as a rule of thumb, I double the cost of the frame per painting. That truly helps in defraying the cost of frames. Artists have a great deal of money tied up in frames around paintings that haven't been sold. In many cases, the collector buys the piece then puts their own frame around the artwork anyway.

Marin (Framed hanging at Exhibition)

And don't forget the glass! Most artists use UV resistant glass, especially on drawings, in order to prevent the image and/or the colors from fading. That glass costs more than regular glass.


That being said, the formula looks like this:

$5/$6 per square inch + 2x Framing = Final total

Or, using the above example

$1,260 + $250 Frame = $1,510

Another factor that some times comes in to play, at least for me, is time invested in creating the artwork. If I am doing a colored pencil piece or a scratchboard piece, I will raise the price accordingly because the time invested in so much greater. (I hate to think I'm "working" for less than minimum wage, but we always do.) I believe colored-pencil artists, in particular, price their work far too low for the time invested and the final product rendered.

How much of an impact "time invested" has on the final price will vary according to the artist. Nonetheless, I believe the formula is a valuable guide to the final price.

In the example of the artwork I have in this article -- Marin -- the formula looks something like this: 10.25 inches x 12 inches x $6 = 738 + $200 Framing = $938. I actually added an additional $900 because there was close to six months work invested in that drawing which was executed in colored pencil. That was an unusual amount of time for me to put in to a piece. Thus, my final price is $1,800. 


Conversely, if there is less time put in to a piece, I deduct according from the formula price. 
The Cardinal oil painting took less than a week to do. At 6 x 8, it would be about $240 unframed. I priced it at $125.

For me, at least, time invested plays a role in my bottom line price. But it's the formula from which all the pricing revolves around. 

Last, but not least, once you set a price, don't change the price -- at least not in front of a perspective customer. Never say "Well, it's $1,500, but I will sell it for $1,200." And the collector is thinking, "Well, maybe that piece isn't worth as much as I thought it was; maybe I shouldn't invest my money since the artist doesn't think as much of it." As an artist, you can't fall in to that easy trap.

Next blog preview: The importance of composition.


 

MBPGrafix.com

YAY!! Houston we have lift-off!

After more tweaking than I thought would be needed I finally have a website I can call my own.
You can access it at http://www.mbpgrafix.com/

I also added a nifty little clicky box to the right of this blog that gives you instant access to the website.  

I do post this disclaimer. It's not totally, completely finished, but it's good enough to let everyone know that I am out there. There's a couple of fixes that need to be done on the Gallery page. I have information that is to come on a couple of the pieces listed. The Commission page might eventually need some revision as the images don't display in their entirety as I would prefer. However, when  you click on them, you do get the full image as it should look.

I want feedback, please!

As the heading suggests, I would appreciate any comments, observations, criticisms regarding the way the website looks and how easy (or not so easy) it is to move around.

Some explanations are in order:

 My palette -- so much more fun than my array of pencils

1) I have linked all purchases to my Etsy site instead of to a credit card procedure. I believe the fees on Etsy will be less expensive than the credit card fees. If an interested person does not have an Etsy account, they can still contact me directly. Good idea or bad idea?

2) PayPal may be something that I will add later. I actually prefer to use PayPay personally as it is more secure for financial transactions than internet credit card purchases. Nonetheless, if someone requests a Commission, then I can still send an invoice via PayPal.

3) My Bio page tab also has a pull-down menu that lists awards, achievements and so forth. Is that too obscure or not easily seen to access? I'm not big on artist's statements. I think most of them come across as being hokey. Anyone who knows me personally knows that I do enjoy telling and listening to stories and that's the only message I truly want to convey.

4) Blog Tab is pretty self-explanatory. If you are reading this blog, then you know where that blog tab will take you!

5) Clicky buttons along the bottom. I registered for a Pinterest account earlier this week, but I don't have it set up yet. Not sure if that link works yet or not because of that.

5) Website Design tab was a last-minute addition. After lengthy discussion with my Webmaster, Stephen Schauer of NKY Bluegrass Computers, we realized that with my design and writing skills and his technical savvy, we could produce solid web pages for businesses and individuals at relatively low cost. It's clearly an area that I will be investing more time in this coming year. If you are interested in talking with us or know someone who might be interested in developing a website, then please remember us for your referral!

Let me know what you think of the (Nearly) Final Product! 

Art-ing

 

I haven't neglected the real reason I have this blog and put together the website -- my artwork.

I have produced a couple of oil paintings since the last posting in mid-December. 

Cardinal 1

Blue Jay 1

Both of these will eventually be listed on the Gallery page. I am not thrilled with the photographic image of the Cardinal. Every time I took a photo of the painting I kept getting a feedback glare. The colors on the bird are not as harsh as it looks on the image shown here. I may have to get the image shot professionally. Or at least by someone who is more skilled than I am.

NEXT BLOG PREVIEW: I will discuss how to price artwork. What goes into my thought process in setting a fee. This is always a great cause of angst among artists. If you charge too much, do you scare away a potential client? If you charge too little, does a potential client think you don't have respect for your own work? For the non-artists among you, this may not seem like much of a dilemma, but it truly is a topic of much discussion among artists.

 



 

 

This & That ...

Sounds like one of those dishes you get at your sister-in-law's home during the Holidays. You can't really figure out what's in it. But it's covered with white chocolate, so it has to be good. "Hmmm ... this "This & That" is quite tasty!" ...

Loveland Winter Art Show

The conclusion of the Loveland WInter Art Show was Saturday, Dec. 14 and I had the good fortune of being named winner of the "People's Choice Award" for the second straight year!

There was a very nice turnout for this year's show, thanks in large part to the horse-drawn carriage rides that bought visitors from the downtown area to the Loveland Artists Studios.

People's Choice Award Winner

I want to especially thank Ed Aufdemkampe for pulling together all the many submissions and then spending untold hours hanging them through the gallery area.

Ed also shot this photograph for me along with the award tag. That was much appreciated!

Website Dreams

Been spending the last week or so working to develop a web site. Figure it's about time to get in to the 21st Century. While I am providing the fodder for the product, the real brains behind this project is my good friend, Stephen Schauer of Bluegrass Computers. While people can actually go online to see the site, it's really not ready for public consumption yet. (Hence the reason I am holding off on posting the website address).

I'm hoping we can pull this all together before the end of the year, though the holidays are fast approaching. Plus, I have to allow evening spare time for Stephen to study his fantasy baseball stats as he prepares to pound my teams in to a pulp again next season.

R.I.P. Blue Dog :(

George Rodrigue and Blue Dog

On a sad note as we come to the end of the year, one of my personal favorite modern day artists, George Rodrigue, passed away on Sunday at the age of 69 after a long battle with cancer.

A legend in New Orleans, Rodrigue was a world-renown artist because of what started out as a simple tribute to his deceased dog, Tiffany. But, like all great artists, there was more to it than the iconic "blue dog." Much of his work draws upon his Cajun upbringing and the lore and stories behind that culture.

Blue Dog, a blue spaniel-terrier mix, was a more family friendly version of the Cajun legend of the "loup-garou," the werewolf or ghost dog that hid in the sugar cane fields and haunted mischievous children.

His unique work will be sorely missed.

  

Year end note

I wish I had produced more work this year, but it was one of those years for various reasons. Maybe next year will be a more productive art year, though from an awards/shows point of view, I was very pleased with the year. Next year will be better!

Meanwhile, I most sincerely extend my best wishes to all of you who follow this blog for a very Merry and Joyous Christmas and a Happy and Safe New Year!!

I will be back shortly after the first of the year -- hopefully with a website at last!!!

Rounding third and heading for home ...

Those of us who live in Greater Cincinnati or grew up listening to Cincinnati Reds' baseball can't help but remember that memorable line from Joe Nuxhall just before he ended his evening's broadcast.

I'm kind of like that with my painting, Opening Night, which, ironically, has a baseball-like quality to its title. I'm at the "rounding third and heading for home ... " stage of this painting. Last night, I finally added the lighting from the overhead lamps and it did change more aspects of the painting than I had thought. But in order to keep the light source consistent, other parts of the painting had to be adjusted. (There's that pushing-pulling adjustment thing I always talk about).

Opening Night

In adding the lighting, I had to change the coloring of the grass in front of the cars to show the reflection. It also required highlights to the pavement around the cars as well.

Hopefully, the addition of the lighting gives a better understanding of what that spot of light is in the lower right corner. It's an "off-canvas" light source. But, like a bad joke, if I have to explain it, then it doesn't work.

There's still work that needs to be done. So I'm still "rounding third" on this painting. Still not real crazy about the transitionals on the dogs. The one on the far left needs to be a tad darker on the left side; the other two need smoother transition.

That is the one thing I find about working with acrylics that is still frustrating. The blending isn't quite as easy/smooth as it is with oil paints. You can see that below with American Eagle, which I finished this past week.

I find as an artist -- in any medium -- that there's always something that makes you say, "Oooo, this is good!" I remember a sports writer friend of mine who used to say he could write an entire column around one good sentence. And I can remember some memorable lines I wrote in short stories that I would sit there and wonder if that really came from me. It was that good! Well, maybe they weren't that good, but I kind of liked them. (A recent line I wrote in a book that probably will never get finished that I particularly liked: "We are losing our past as we chase the future while we live uncomfortably in the present.")

The point I am trying to get at is that there are a couple of things about this painting that I particularly liked and wondered how the world I did that: 

For example, the license plate on the Lexus:

Detailed breakout

I wanted to make an Illinois license plate. Illinois' plate is in script and I actually pulled off that tiny writing with a brush. I amaze myself sometimes. (Of course, we come right back and make the #1 crooked, but I hope I can fix that!)

American Eagle

Managed to finish American Eagle, but the water-soulable oils won't be dry in time for the opening of the Loveland Arts Council Winter Art Show which begins on Thursday.

Hopefully,  I will be able to get it framed and ready to go in time for the Second Saturday show.

More details below!

Loveland Winter Art Show Begins Thursday!

The Loveland Arts Council Winter Art Show begins on Thursday from 6-9 p.m. at the Loveland Art Studios. If you have never been there before, the easiest way to find the studios is to "Google/Map Quest" the Loveland Post Office. The studios are right across the street in the old school building.

The show, which will feature refreshments and entertainment, runs from 6-9 p.m. on Thursday. A second Artists' Reception will be held on Second Saturday, December 14, and that will run from 6-10 p.m. That, too, will feature entertainment, food and adult beverages.

Last year, I won People's Choice Award at this show. I have two paintings entered this year, which, if you have followed the blog, you have seen ad nauseum -- Sailboat on the Pointe and 324. If you haven't seen them, then scroll down the blog site and catch up with one of the 25 different versions I have posted.

Hopefully, I will see you there and remember -- vote early and vote often!
 

 

Sometimes it doesn't work ...

Just to make the disclaimer first -- I am just as guilty as everyone else!

Okay. That's out of the way.

I admit it. I have some opportunities to look at other artists' blogs and I am somewhat amused that I never see an artist post a bad effort. AND -- see the first sentence of this week's blog. Yes, I'm as guilty as everyone else.

We, as artists, are read by many, many folks. I, myself, have a following of at least 1 million readers. Well, maybe one reader, BUT, he/she is ever faithful!

We, as artists, make art look easy. It's not. We post our successes. We rarely post our mis-steps. Fortunately for you, today's blog is a chance to see what I regard as a dismal performance.

Ray Hassard at work

Last weekend, I had the great fortune of taking a pastel workshop from one of America's finest pastel artists -- Ray Hassard (who lives in Greater Cincinnati area, by the way). I had been so looking forward to this.

The focus of the workshop was "Making a Public Scene." Ray has the uncanny ability to make beautiful artwork out of what most of us regard as every day life. And, among the things I learned this weekend, is to view my every day surroundings with a more artistic eye. 

In any case, after a demonstration by Ray we had the option of choosing to work from one of the hundreds of photos that Ray graciously allowed us to use, or we were free to use one of our own. I decided to do one of my own photos, one I had taken several years ago while in Oberlin, Ohio. I had filed it away as a future painting and now was the time to take advantage of one of the many I took up there.

Bad art in progress

The photo depicts one lone person walking in front of an equally lonely movie theatre that was featuring the movie -- Social Network. Oh, the irony was just too good to pass up.

After an initial sketch and some cropping, Ray and I agreed to move the person away from the black movie facade and put him in front of one of the windows. My intention was to give this painting an Edward Hopper feel.

Armed with my many boxes of pastels, including my three-drawer box given to me by a dear friend to store my many colors, I had all the best intentions. Indeed, for a while it looked like it would come together. It achieved the mood that I wanted as most everyone who came back to look at it said how depressing it was. 

A different focus

But as the weekend progressed, me and my artwork regressed. Everything I tried didn't work. I was fighting the colors and the lighting. It wasn't vibrant enough to further emphasize the irony of the story of the painting. By the time Sunday afternoon had come to a close (not quickly enough), I had overworked this painting to death. It was flat and blah and, well, as you can tell, I just wasn't happy with it.

These things happen. Happen more often than artists acknowledge to the viewing public. All the drive home from Rising Sun, IN, I kept asking myself what I should have done differently. And, that, is what artists do. We are constantly pushing and pulling and adjusting and fixing and sometimes, the painting works! 

For one, if I want to do this scene the way I wound up painting it, I need to do it on a larger surface than the 11 x 14 I was working on. Two, if I want to keep it to the size I was working with, then I think I will have to crop this photo a LOT more. It may have worked better with a close up image of the man walking in front of the movie theatre with the poster of the movie title behind glass.

I did like the shadow transition from the sidewalk to the street. All is not lost!!

Works in progress

Just to keep you updated on Opening Night, it continues to progress fairly well. I am fighting with the gray car on the left side. 

Opening Night

The glare on the right side of the painting is from the lighting when I took the photo of the painting. It has, however, given me some pause for consideration to add some lighting "glare" under the far light post on the right side. 

The dogs work now I think. I had to add moe coloring on the first one on the left. He was looking too much like Calliope in the center.


Finally, now that I am back in to painting instead of color-pencilling (I am allowed to make up my own words), I am doing several paintings at the same time. 

I've included one of the 4 x 6 efforts. It's not quite done yet, but It's tentatively called American Eagle. I am painting this with water-soluble oil paint.

American Eagle