Pyramids

The pyramid is a stable structure, and a group of figures arranged in a pyramid shape on a plane surface usually results in a stable composition.  Even when the forms are busy and involved, the overall impression is of rightness, solidity and permanence.  These examples are chosen from work done in several periods from the Renaissance to the present.

Rossi 1528:

El Greco 1575:

Van der Burch 1650:

Fragonard 1780:

Delacroix 1862:

Botero 1973:

Buffett* 2006:

* "Pauline Street Breakdown"

More Pegge Hopper

When I posted the article "Painting Sunshine,"  http://williambuffett.blogspot.com/2011/01/painting-sunshine.html  I had not seen Pegge Hopper's canvas of her two daughters on the beach.  It is a good example of the painting of sunshine.  The figures are modelled, but only in a few close values, shallowly.  The sensation of bright sunlight is achieved by the extreme interval between the lit and shaded portions of the sand on the beach.

Apart from the impression of midday sun, the composition of the picture is a marvel.  Though the main figure is in repose, the picture is dynamic because there isn't a horizontal line in it; all are diagonals.

The painting is compelling to the viewer because it is full of novelty and the unexpected, yet in perfect equilibrium.  Variety, ( in this case cropped extremities, hidden faces, foreshortened torsos, feet at the top) is an achievable quality, and so is equilibrium, if you employ symmetry.  But to get both balance and variety into the same composition is something for an artist to strive for.  Pegge Hopper has done it here.

Pegge Hopper

Here is a painting by Pegge Hopper, featuring a Polynesian woman seated in profile on the floor.  She wears a modest garment which covers all but her head, hands, and part of a foot.  The artist's  knowledge of the figure, and her ability to draw it convincingly, enable her to make us aware of the body underneath and all of its articulations, using nothing more than a simple, flat, colored shape.

Pegge Hopper's expertise at drawing is also responsible for the capture of the fleeting motions made by the arms and hands.  The woman reaches back to separate her hair from her neck and fans some air in to cool herself.  It is a familiar, everyday gesture, feminine and graceful.

The colors, however, do not result from fine draftsmanship.  They come from somewhere that, unfortunately for me, I have never been..  The Isles of the Blessed, Intuition, Paradise, the Albert King color system, I don't know where it is, but Pegge Hopper does.
http://peggehopper.com/index.html

Pitfall

When undertaking a complicated composition, an artist often divides the attention of the viewer by creating two (or more) centers of interest.  When that is done, the picture's integrity suffers.  I exposed one of my own mistakes in a previous article.  http://williambuffett.blogspot.com/2011/11/using-photographs.html

The two houses, in this sketch, were threatening to divide, like microbes, into two cells.

Paul Gaugin painted fine and original and complex pictures which are treasured everywhere they hang.  Only a very few, painted early in his career, exhibit this flaw.

Giovanni Bellini:

I could find only one somewhat borderline example from the work of Andrew Wyeth:

Gabriele Munter:

Artists, be aware of this pitfall.

 

Dancers

From stages, streets, clubs and movies, here are some dancers from my files:

Using Photographs

In order to paint the pictures I imagine, I need the ability to draw accurately from life.  It is true even when I use photographs for reference.  To illustrate:

While riding through a residential neighborhood in San Pedro on a quick trip to California, I spotted an outstanding motif - two Spanish-style houses on a hill with a view of the Pacific in the distance.  There was only time for a few snapshots.

No one point of view was satisfactory; the sketch I made later required me to synthesize the three.

Comparing the photos with the watercolor it is obvious that many changes had to be made:  adjustments of walls and garages, exaggeration of the steepness of the hill, a drastic change in the direction of the light, omission of cars and trash cans, addition of clouds and trees.

At this point I had made one of the most common mistakes in art: I had put two pictures into one rectangle.  The house and garage on the left was one picture, the house and garage on the right was another.  It isn't always so easy to fix; this time I just shoved them together.

Two more steps in the development:

The wall and steps on the left seemed too stretched out; the redrawing is showing in the above version.

This is where it stands today, after 14 days of work:

 

Details Continued

Pierre Bonnard often painted complex still lifes which included a figure.  This example illustrates how he treats the features of the woman in the picture with less detail than the apples or the pattern on her shawl.

Rembrandt did the opposite in this portrait.  The garment of the sitter is nothing more than a flat, out-of-focus shape of black, and the interior is suggested only by a few broad strokes.

This close-up shows the care he reserved for the face.

Details

Another choice which an artist has, when setting to work, is the use of more or less detail.  I have chosen portraits to illustrate the extremes.

This (portion of a) portrait by Edouard Manet employs little detail; the eye on the left is a mere marking.  But the simply and boldly painted figure strikes the viewer from a distance and conveys energy and resoluteness as well as the likeness of an important statesman.

This self portrait by Hans Holbein is equally effective even though the whole surface is carefully worked over and rendered in sharp focus.  The finely detailed information provided draws the viewer in for a closer look.

Here we have a cosmopolitan man-about-town painted by Amadeo Modigliani in a spare style, with only the essentials included.  We immediately feel that we've got this guy's number.

What a contrast is this character painted by James Wyeth.  Little is left out, including scores of individual whiskers.  But we've got this guy's number, too, right away.

The last pair represent even greater extremes.  The woman painted by Milton Avery is almost reduced to an abstract pattern, and the lovely, harmonious colors are relied upon to tell us about her.

We get almost more than we want to know about this laboriously rendered man by Ivan Albright.

The conclusion is not that anything goes, as far as detail and the lack of it, but that anything CAN go.

 

Raw Material

On a recent trip to California, I made some scribbles in a small notebook, in hopes of capturing something which could one day be elaborated into a composition.  Here is some of the undigested, undeveloped raw material: