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See art in a fresh way. |
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Mini-Tutorial: Rhythm |
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Rhythm is beautiful way to
organize chaotic elements. This is a 12 x 16" acrylic portrait of a friend, architect Joseph Castro. He sat for this a few hours every week over nine months. His face conveyed to me a combination of something like a cupid, something astute and wizened-perhaps something to due with his New York City upbringing. For the background I used a dark brown leather jacket hung on an easel. It had a complementary color and texture to him and it gave the portrait a slight edge. It also excited me that I couldn't recall ever seeing a portrait with a leather background. Any complex subject is visually chaotic; with incongruent shapes and millions of details. In other words, when you look at something like a person's face or a panoramic landscape there are a million things to look at--out of all that stuff which do you draw/paint? One of the fun and great challenges for an artist is to organize this chaos in a meaningful way. I would like to discuss one element of organization: rhythm.
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Looking for the pose Joseph
and I chatted over coffee and I studied the manner he moved his
head when he talked. I had noticed his raised eyebrow and how it
curved into an "arch"...and then
saw another "arch" that outlined the tilt of his head. Presto. That set everything in motion. The "arch" was also a great shape for conveying the cupid-like "round" qualities and the villainess quality of the arched brow and lip. Visual rhythms are made up of similar or complementary angles, contours, or lines. Starting this portrait I began to see an "arch" as my main visual element. In the process of composing everything else in the painting I was on the lookout for shapes and lights that could "double" for an "arch". Was it possible that I could accent an arch of the lip, nose, brow, collar, or ear? If I recall, the collar sometimes could flatten out, losing its "arch", but at other times it was perfect. A living model moves and so do the clothes and I would take artistic license to make sure that the collar arched in the way I wanted.
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The more I worked and looked
the more I saw "arches" everywhere. A great consequence of
looking for rhythms is that you don't get lost in details but
are constantly looking over the whole painting. I remembered that when his lips were slightly parted the upper would curve just as did his eyebrow. Click! As an aside, I also recalled the late Renaissance artist, Bernini, commenting that the best time to capture life in a person is just when they have begun to speak and their lips are slightly parted.
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| Here you can see all the rhythms of detail of shapes and light I was seeing in his face. I would like to mention that I was not making them up where I did not see them in real life. |
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The folds in the leather
background were perfect for finding more "arches" to accent and
to integrate the whole painting.
I hope you enjoyed this look at art through an artist's eyes.
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