Why should I paint with the point? Because it’s the feeling of loneliness.
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by Dan Schultz on March 18, 2023 with 5 Comments
Design (or you could call it Composition) is the Number One principle in the fundamentals of visual art. You may have heard a wild-eyed instructor in art class exclaim, “Composition is King!” With a greater focus on composition, you can design your way to better paintings.
Early Study
In 2001, I was making a determined effort to learn how to paint the landscape outdoors. I had been working as a graphic designer for a few years, so I felt like I had a good handle on design. But I wanted to improve in basic painting principles like color mixing and understanding the effects of light outdoors.
I took a workshop that year from landscape painter Skip Whitcomb. He gave a great workshop with focused training in the fundamentals that I wanted to learn. And he spent a lot of time highlighting the importance of design. Like I mentioned, I was feeling pretty good about my understanding of design. It had been a big part of my commercial art and graphic design training. So I placed most of my focus on the other things Skip was teaching.
My continued practice after the workshop made me recognize the many areas in which I still needed improvement (basically all of them), so I took another workshop the next year, this time from Matt Smith. His teaching guided me to some great “Aha!” moments of understanding. And he also spent a lot of time reminding us of the importance of design.
By this time I began to realize that I wasn’t quite as good at design as I thought I was. I wasn’t actually giving it enough attention. Both Whitcomb and Smith, at the top of the landscape painting genre, continued to give focused attention to design in their work. It wasn’t an afterthought. It was the first thought.
Here’s the thing. A strong design will give power to your artwork. Without it, no matter how well you handle the other elements (value, color, paint application, edge handling, etc.), your painting will lack the strength it could have had.
Design Your Way to Better Paintings
So how do you compose your scene to create a strong design? Here are a few tips as you begin a new painting:
- Start by drawing a few small pencil sketches of the scene in different formats. Try the scene as a square, or as a vertical rectangle. Or as the tried-and-true horizontal landscape format.
- Zoom in on what interests you most about your subject. What parts of the scene could be cropped out to highlight the parts that are grabbing your attention?
- Visualize your subject as an arrangement of two-dimensional shapes. One shape next to another. What shapes can you combine? What shapes should be separated or removed? Simplify as much as possible. (Remember, simplicity equals strength.)
- For help with simplifying, try breaking down your subject into just two or three value masses. (Search online for “landscape notan” images to see what I mean.)
- Watch out for problematic designs such as:
- dividing your canvas into equal halves or thirds
- centered objects
- elements spaced or sized too equally
- areas of interest placed too close to the edges of the canvas
- crowded designs
- overly scattered shapes
- excessive repetition
- tangents (points or lines where shapes meet)
- Don’t rush the design stage. Make sure you feel good about your composition before beginning to paint. It’s very unlikely that you’ll create a strong design accidentally by just blundering onward before you work out a good design idea.
Further Study
I highly recommend Edgar Payne’s book Composition of Outdoor Painting for further study on design. Some of his sketches in the book inspired me to create my examples of problematic designs shown above.
For even more design study, check out my video lessons at Sentient Academy. I’ll walk you through design principles and show you how to sketch helpful thumbnails as you generate design ideas.
I’ve realized that design is often what first draws my attention when I’m choosing a scene to paint. And it seems to attract more and more of my focus as I continue my efforts as an artist. I hope as you keep these ideas in mind they will help you design your way to better paintings too.
P.S. While considering those problematic design guidelines, realize that now and then artists have successfully broken those guidelines. Maybe you’ll want to take it as a personal challenge to break them yourself and really feel like a rebel!
Use Line, Point and Shape to Activate the Visual Field in a Painting Composition
Although my paintings feel contemporary, the design principles actually date back to traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy. For example, the progress of traditional Chinese calligraphy starts from the point of a Chinese brush, extends to line, and become a stroke of shape. The theory of modern design already exists in Chinese calligraphy; every stroke is designing. One of the first steps in composing a new painting is to determine what I call the point and the line and the shape.
A point is the smallest and most basic element—it could appear as a leaf, a piece of rock, a bright spot, a very small shadow, etc., in the nature or the subject of painting. These can vary in size, value, regularity or irregularity, and can be used alone or as a unit in a group which forms a line or shape in the image. Points can be used to form a value or pattern—placed close together they form a darker value; further apart they form a lighter value.
A line can be straight, curved, or organic—it could appear as the branch of a tree, a folded piece of cloth or edge of a dress, and can vary in thickness and value. They can be very important in providing directional movement in the work, leading the eye through the image. Together they can form shapes, patterns, and textures, and can help lead the eye back into space in a landscape or other image. They can also form empty or filled shapes.
Shapes or masses can be organic or geometric in nature, such as a large shadow, a wall, or a big sky, and they can be solid or empty. They can be used alone, or as units in another larger shape. They can also form patterns, and be used in the division of space in an image, and distribute the “weight” in an image. They can also vary in value or color, as well as in size, which helps to establish spatial depth. Using similar shapes can help unify a composition; varying the shapes adds variety and interest. There is an effect called counterchange, meaning areas of dark shapes on a light area, and nearby areas of light shapes on a dark area.
Although a painting can be built on two or even just one of these three elements, I prefer to build my compositions on a mixture of all three, and use different ways to organize the elements to carry the different moods.
The main design functions include leading the eye path around and through the painting, stabilizing the composition with balance and neutralizing of elements, directional movement created by elements, and considering the total space. I work this out by drawing a series of little thumbnail sketches. When I’m drawing these thumbnails, I look at the subject and ask myself, where are the lines? Where’s the point? Where are the masses, or what can I group together to make a mass? Where do I want them on the canvas?
Sometimes the foundation for rhythm and movement is where the point meets the line. A strong diagonal will give the painting a quick movement and fast pace, while a more horizontal line tends to give the painting a more static feeling with more stability. The point is there to balance the line and it either stops the viewer’s eye from moving too quickly along a diagonal, or it encourages the eye to keep moving around a horizontal. I decide between the two based on the overall mood or feeling—exciting or quiet—I want the painting to be.
From there, I arrange the rest of the shapes to balance and support the rhythm I have begun to establish. In addition to creating a sense of movement and pace, I also want to use composition to give the paintings a contemporary twist. I really love traditional landscapes, but they use more horizontal formats and horizontal lines. I want to break that up and do something different and have a unique look in my paintings by bringing some abstract qualities into my landscapes. To achieve this, you should not be afraid to depart from the reality of the subject and make modifications. Using design principles, I change a lot of what I see and edit the shapes to make the composition work.
Applying Formal Qualities
While I am arranging the shapes in the thumbnail sketches, I also work out the main values of these shapes. And again, the choices are based on mood. I always have three general groups of values—lights, middle, and darks—but I don’t use the full range of values from white to black. I let one general value dominate, depending on the feeling I want to paint. If it’s a somber or heavy painting, I plan a low-key painting with mostly dark values. If it’s a happier painting, I do a high-key painting that’s mostly light values. Whatever dominates the subject or whatever mood I want to suggest becomes the key of the painting.
The color palette also contributes to the feeling in each painting. I work with two “systems” or ways of thinking about color. One is the traditional way of working with the local colors we see as they’re affected by the light, while the other system flows from my training in graphic design and my knowledge of the psychological effects of color. So for example, if I want a quieter painting, I use the dulled-down, neutral colors that make me feel quiet. But if I want a lot of energy, I exaggerate some of the colors and make them very intense. All of the paintings begin on white canvas, with Burnt Umber or Van Dyke Brown to block in the darker values. The range of colors comes later as I build up layers, working dark to light.
Perhaps one of the most important qualities in my work, however, is my use of brushstrokes and edges. Edge control is one of the hallmarks of my personal style. I am very sensitive to soft edges; a lot of people may be painting sharp edges but I have a greater affinity for the soft edge. I see soft edges where a lot of people would put a harder edge, but my spirit guides me to use soft edges. The edges serve another function as well: guiding your eye through a painting. I often have as many as four focal points within a painting, and edges are the means of guiding you to the most important one first and then the others. I create a path for your eyes to move across each canvas. Soft edges allow some areas to become less important, which encourages your eye to move along the eye path, and harder edges act as pauses or stops along the path.
Similarly, I use brushstrokes to direct your eye. In large, flat, less important areas, I tend to use thinner paint with little emphasis on brushstroke. But in the main focal areas, I use less medium and heavier paint, and give the brushstrokes a little more action. Regardless of the types of strokes I am making, I consistently use really big brushes—as in a 1½-inch brush for an 8 x 10-inch painting—to lay in the basic values and colors. My favorite brush is the fan brush. I can easily make a soft edge with it, but it can also be used to make a harder edge or used on its corner for fine detail . . . using a very delicate touch.
Mixing It Up
Some years ago, a few of my gallery representatives expressed frustration about how to best exhibit my paintings, which are obviously tied to abstraction, yet rich with mood and dimension. They said the work looks too contemporary next to traditional paintings, and too traditional next to the avant garde and conceptual work. I just laughed. I want my landscapes to be traditional, representational art with a modern twist. With me, it’s an ideal blend by design.
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Every mark matters
Let me give you a simple example: Take a blank sheet of paper and draw a large arc on it from top right to bottom left (A). That arc leads your eye across the page down to the lower left and has become the dynamic of the design on the picture plane. This dynamic isn’t an aesthetic feeling or preference, nor can you do much to stop it—it’s just a fact resulting from the way your eye responds. When you begin painting, each mark you make influences the picture plane in that same way—sometimes dramatically, sometimes subtly. The marks all add up to the lively dynamic. Each mark is doing something. You need to be aware of that something when you paint. Each new mark not only represents an element—a tree trunk or a patch of sunlight, for example—but also influences the entire dynamic of your painting.
Most painters bury their head in the subject they’ve chosen, and, because that subject looks interesting or beautiful, they assume the painting will also be interesting or beautiful. It doesn’t work that way. Either you’re molding the dynamics to enliven the design of your painting, or the dynamics are running the design on their own—and seldom to your advantage. The moment you get lost in the subject at the expense of the design, your chances of success quickly start to slip. So the crux of the matter is that when you paint, you must give at least equal attention to the design as to the subject. It’s like playing music—if you get so entranced with getting the notes right that you lose the beat, you’ll lose the music. In the same way, if you get so caught up in the subject that you lose the design, you’ll lose the painting. .
Pushing design 1
My thumbnail (B) has only three value masses—very simple. Note the gradation in the water that pushes your eye up into the sketch.
The water gradation in the finished painting The Mill Pond (oil, 30×20) (C) tones down the strong contrasts in the lower right. Instead of the eye getting hung up in that area, it moves smoothly up the painting. The subject is trees, land and water, but the painting is clearly design driven.
When I teach workshops, I see work like D over and over. The artist is in such a hurry to start painting and gets so engaged in the subject that any sense of design is ignored or forgotten. The result becomes ordinary—even boring. You can’t be so polite. Push your design. Create dramatic emphasis. Notice, too, the distraction created by the strong contrasts along the top of the trees, both in the sky and in the reflection. All those small, sharp edge contrasts override any other design movement that may have been planned. .
Design-driven tips
How do you become more design conscious when you paint? I have five suggestions:
- Do a thumbnail (see B and E). Consider it a road map. Think primarily in terms of several bold value masses. Usually students hate doing thumbnails; they just want to get the brush to canvas—but a good thumbnail shows you simply and graphically how strong your design is before you start painting.
- Use a viewfinder (a cardboard or plastic frame) to isolate or crop your design idea. Really push your design before you start painting (see Pushing Design 1 above and Pushing Design 2 below). Go for asymmetry and push it 50 percent more than feels comfortable. As you paint, there’s an inevitable slip between what you envisioned and what’s actually occurring. The painting loses punch (it happens to all of us). If your design is dramatic enough before you start, your painting will still be gripping when it’s finished, even with that inevitable slip.
- Stand back. You need to get your head out of what you’re doing and stand back, and to do this, you need to paint 10 to 12 feet from the canvas. I don’t mean you need long brushes—you just need to stand back and see what’s happening. Often. Otherwise you can immerse yourself for hours in all kinds of details and nuances that aren’t even visible 10 feet away.
- Change your viewing orientation. When you stand back, every now and then look at your painting in a mirror or upside down or both. You’ll often notice problems you couldn’t see before.
- Walk away. Every hour take a break from your work for a few minutes. Then come back and look at your painting with fresh eyes.
To sum up, crop and frame dramatically and find large, strong value masses to drive your painting. When you think in terms of design as you compose, and not just subject, your paintings immediately become more engaging—and your success rate soars. .
Pushing design 2 This thumbnail sketch in two values (E) shows how simple, yet dramatic, is the design behind painting F. West to Carombe (oil, 10×12) (F) is a plein air painting done in France. Obviously the light didn’t stay like this for long. Early morning tree shadows (which slowly moved toward me and then disappeared) created the dark mass in the foreground. The patch of shadow in the midground appeared momentarily when I first arrived. I found the dramatic horizontals and verticals irresistible to paint. .
Painting G is another example of what I often see when teaching. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the way the work is painted—all the information is there, simply stated. But compared to F, you’d have to say it’s all subject, not design. Squint your eyes when looking at painting G, and you’ll see little value contrast. The painting is pleasing because the landscape is attractive, but the design has no impact. The design in figure F is less easily dismissed. .
