Visual composition

“ The inevitable variety of tint and value, of definiteness and vagueness, gives a never-ending play of contrasts and blendings. These are qualities which go to the harmonizing of color, to the expression of light, and particularly to the feeling of atmosphere. This constant variety of contrasting edges is the constant movement and play of the visual rays, and the study of it gives life and vibration to the picture, and all the objects represented in it. ”

“ The inexhaustible and unceasingly varying beauties of art begin to develope themselves most when the study of Light and Shade commences; and the student is amply recompensed for the time he has devoted to obtaining a knowledge of correctness in outline. It is now that he sees Nature with other and improved vision—with clearer conceptions of her character—in her sunny and joyous revellings, as in her vast and awful sublimity.
Drawing gives form; Colour, its visible quality; and Light and Shade, its solidity. ”

“ Masses of light, supported and brought out by masses of shadow, are the surest means of producing it. Effect is procured by the strongest opposition, and sometimes by the reverse. Arrangement and Expression is, in historical composition, much the same thing that Effect is in landscape-painting. ”

“ Sketching light and shade from nature (with a single colour, or a stump) , teaches us to profit by every circumstance, natural or accidental. And these sketches, studied at home, teach us, in turn, at once to compose, and to extend the sphere of our observation;—it carries us to the doctrine of probable possibilities; and invests the meanest subject with attraction; the most infinite variety becomes simplicity upon these terms.
The light and shade of a picture should never bear the same proportions; it should, in all instances, differ materially in quantity ”

“ In literature alone of the arts, images from all departments of sense can be aroused. Visual images play a greater role there than in painting and sculpture, for the reason that, in the latter, visual sensations take their place—we do not image what we can see. In sculpture, the greater part of the imagery is of touch and motion—in the imagination, we feel the surfaces and move with the represented motions; the whiteness or blackness of the materials prevents the arousal of the image of the color of the body. ”

“ Work built up on outline drawing to which has been added light and shade, colour, aerial perspective, &c., may eventually approximate to the perfect visual appearance. And inversely, representations approached from the point of view of pure vision, the mosaic of colour on the retina, if pushed far enough, may satisfy the mental perception of form with its touch associations. And of course the two points of view are intimately connected. You cannot put an accurate outline round an object without observing the shape it occupies in the field of vision. ”

“ The message of impressionism is light, as the effort of the early painters was to secure light, the quest of all the philosophies. The impressionist calls upon every part of his work to speak of light, the middle tint, the high lights and the shadow all vibrating with it. From the decorative point of view alone, the picture, as a surface containing the greatest amount of beauty of which the subject is capable is more beautiful when varied by many tones, or by few, in strong contrast, than when this variety or contrast is wanting. ”

“ In such a landscape perspective of value and color is easily observed, making positive the separation of objects. The painter, under these conditions, is independent of linear perspective to give depth to his work, which being one of the cheap devices of painting he avoids as much as possible. ”

“ The light masses instead of the dark masses dominate the pictures, which have great brilliancy.
These tone values are only to be perceived in their true relationship by the eye contemplating a wide field of vision. With the ordinary habit of looking only at individual parts of nature, the general impression being but dimly felt, they are not observed. The artist has to acquire the habit of generalising his visual attention over a wide field if he would perceive the true relation of the parts to this scale of values. ”

“ Practice in composing with few and simple elements, of deciding when contrasting colors are of equal value, or equal intensity, is of direct use in art. The landscape painter opposes the whole sky to the whole ground; he wants a vibration of color in each, without disturbing the values; the designer in stained glass sometimes desires to fill a space with iridescent color, perhaps as a background for figures. ”

“ With such an analysis, comparison and the elaboration of analogies involve no attempt to make one art legislate for another, no attempt to blur their differences or to destroy their autonomy.
In analysing the experiences of the visual arts the first essential is to avoid the word ‘see’, a term which is treacherous in its ambiguity. If we say that we see a picture we may mean either that we see the pigment-covered surface, or that we see the image on the retina cast by this surface, or that we see certain planes or volumes in what is called the ‘picture-space’. ”

“ In every composition the eye should cross the central division at least once. This initiates equipoise, for in the survey of a picture the eye naturally shifts from the centre of interest, which may be on one side, to the other side of the canvas. If there be something there to receive it, the balance it seeks is gratified. If it finds [pg 31] nothing, the artist must create something, with the conclusion that some element of the picture was lacking. ”

“ To be effective in a frame, balance and unity are just as necessary. The eye finds repose and delight in the perfect equipoise of elements, brought into combination and bound together by the girdle of the frame.
A picture should be able to hang from its exact centre. Imperfect composition inflicts upon the beholder the duty of accommodating his head to the false angle of the picture. Pictures that stand the test of time do not demand astigmatic glasses. We view them balanced, and they repeat the countersign—“balanced.” ”

“ This second purpose is what makes the picture a work of art. And we found that the artist, in order to make his composition give pleasure to our sense of sight, relies upon the pleasure that we derive from repetition and contrast, and upon the instinct that we all have for keeping our balance. The elements of composition, in fact, are repetition and contrast in a state of balance, sometimes with the added charm of rhythm. ”

“ The landscape painter may avail himself of it as the figure painter does of his screen, counting on the cloud shadow to temper and unite disjointed items of his picture. He makes use of it where leading lines are wanting or are undesirable, or to give [pg 172] an additional accent to light by such contrast or to introduce a note of dark by suppressing the tone of an isolated object. Gradation is the sweetening touch in art, ofttimes making unity of discordant and unartful elements. The vision will pierce the shadow to find the light beyond. ”

“ This idea may seem to disturb the notion of balance across the centre, especially when the object which receives our first consideration occupies one side of the picture. A study of the postulates together with the principle of the steelyard and the knowledge of picture balance will clear any apprehension of conflict.
The Dominant Idea Above and beyond the object which dominates all others is the idea which dominates the picture. Such may be light, gloom, space, action, passion, repose, communion, humor, or whatever has stimulated and therefore must govern the composition. ”

“ All the lovely tone arrangements that nature presents in these more unusual aspects are a new study, and offer 202unlimited new material to the artist. Many artists are content to use this simply for itself, the beauty of a rare tone effect being sufficient with the simplest accessories to make a picture. But in figure composition, what new and wonderful things can be imagined in which some rare aspect of nature's tone-music is combined with a fine figure design. ”

“ Scumble and glaze and paint into them, and glaze and scumble again. Use any process which will help your picture to have those qualities which are always essential to any picture being a good one. The qualities of line and mass, composition that is, you get from the first, or you never can get it at all. Those qualities of character, and truth of representation, and exactness of meaning, you get in the first paintings, together with the more general qualities of color and tone. ”

“ A splendid and fascinating effect, or a beautiful display of colour, or something or other that the artist has dexterously contrived to invest his work with, is generally the cause to which this failure is ascribable; while in the end, our own sympathies with a composition, correct in its management, appeal to the feelings and judgment at once. ”

“ Breadth in the treatment of the figure may be obtained by graded light. If a shadow be produced at the bottom of the picture sufficiently strong to obliterate both the light and shade of detail, and thence be made to weaken as it proceeds upward and finally give place to light, where light is most needed, great simplicity as well as the element of variety will be the result. ”

“ These senses provide the basis for all the arts—music and poetry are arts of sound; painting, sculpture, and architecture are arts of vision. And there are good reasons for their special fitness. Most cogent of all is the fact that vision and hearing are the natural media of expression; sounds, be they words or musical tones, convey thoughts and feelings; so do visual sensations—the facial expression or gesture seen communicates the inner life of the speaker; and even abstract colors and space-forms, like red and the circle, have independent feeling-tones. ”

“ The trend of vision on leaving the lion is to the extreme right and thence back along the pathway of the dark distance into the picture to the group of trees. Across this is an oppositional balance from the bushes of the foreground to the mountains of the extreme distance. The only line in the composition, better seen in the painting than in the reproduction, counts much in the balance over the centre. The placement of the important item or subject, has little to do with the balance scheme of a picture. ”

“ In so far as the artist looks at objects only as part of a whole field of vision which is his own potential picture, he can give no account of their æsthetic value. Every solid object is subject to the play of light and shade, and becomes a mosaic of visual patches, each of which for the artist is related to other visual patches in the surroundings. ”

“ There are schemes of much dark and little light, or the reverse, or an even [pg 156] division, and in each case the balance of light and dark is sustained; for when there is little dark its accenting power is enhanced and when little light is allowed, it, in the same manner, gains in attraction. But light and dark every work of art must have; for to think of light without dark is impossible. When, therefore, the artist begins a picture his first thought is what is to be the scheme of light and shade? The direction or source of the light helps a decision. ”

“ Now a picture is a thing of paint upon a flat surface, and a drawing is a matter of certain marks upon a paper, and how to translate the intricacies of a visual or imagined impression to the prosaic terms of masses of coloured pigment or lines and tones is the business with which our technique is concerned. The ease, therefore, with which a painter will be able to remember an impression in a form from which he can work, will depend upon his power to analyse vision in this technical sense. ”

“ But even from the point of view of the true visual perception (if there is such a thing) that modern art has heard so much talk of, the copying of the retina picture is not so great a success. The impression carried away from a scene that has moved us is not its complete visual aspect. Only those things that are significant to the felt impression have been retained by the mind; and if the picture is to be a true representation of this, the significant facts must be sorted out from the mass of irrelevant matter and presented in a lively manner. ”

“ What chiefly concerns us here is the fact that the pictures on our retinas are flat, of two dimensions, the same as the canvas on which we paint. If you examine these visual pictures without any prejudice, as one may with a camera obscura, you will see that they are composed of masses of colour in infinite variety and complexity, of different shapes and gradations, and with many varieties of edges; giving to the eye the illusion of nature with actual depths and distances, although one knows all the time that it is a flat table on which one is looking. ”

“ In conclusion, the concentration, the diffusion, or the contrast of light and shade, is best understood from a few blots made from the pictures of those great masters, who strike us as having excelled most in this department of the art, carefully preserving their arrangements, and applying them to our own compositions, until we feel and think like them. ”

“ To temper a local color so that it shall settle itself to a nicety at any distance, in the perspective scheme, and to express the exact degree of shadow which a given color shall have under a given light and at a given distance are problems which absorb four-fifths of the painter's attention. ”

“ The inutility of considering composition in outline or in solid mass of tone as a safe first analysis of finished work is evident when we discover that not until we have brought the picture to the last stage of detail finish do we fully encompass balance. The conception which looks acceptable to one's general idea in outline may finish all askew; or the scheme of Light and Dark in one or two flat tones minus the balance of gradation will prove false as many times as faithful, as it draws toward completion. ”