Designing Your Paintings with Purpose
(Delving into the nitty gritty of design theory.)
By: John Hughes-
As stated in previous articles, there are two important aspects of landscape painting which are central to the creation of effective works of art, they are: Learning to depict the effects light, along with an understanding of design principles. These two can’t be over stressed in their importance. Today I will discuss the second one, design.
What makes a good design? Specifically, what makes an effective design in a landscape? At its basic level and without the added enhancements of color, edges and brushwork; (A good design in a landscape painting involves an interesting balance of lights, darks and mid-tones, which are arranged into patterns, that have well-proportioned mixtures of linear and mass elements. If one can learn to recognize these underlying abstract patterns, without the organic embellishments and details of nature, they will be well on their way to creating compelling landscapes that will capture the imagination of art lovers and collectors everywhere.
Is design a skill that can be learned, or is it a talent that you are just born with? As to the second question, I really don’t want to get into the philosophy aspect too deeply, but let’s just say that yes, some people are predisposed to certain talents and others just need to work harder! Like anything else, design can be learned and there are certain principles at play in a pleasing arrangement that I will discuss here.
Once you understand what these principles are, it’s necessary to practice and make a real effort to incorporate them into your work.
I’m going to begin with a list of objectives, elements and general principles of good design:
Three Objectives of Good Design for Landscape Painters:
1 – To communicate our fascination with the subject.
2 – To paint the subject in a way that reveals our equal fascination with the painterly means of expression used to produce it.
3 – To create an interesting abstract motif that will hold the viewer’s attention, by employing the principles of composition and design.
Tools or Elements to Create Designs:
Drawing, Color, Value, Edges, Brushwork
14 Basic Principles of Design:
1 – Balance
2 – Dominance
3 – Subordination
4 - Simplification
5 – Economy
6 – Relationships
7 – Depth – (Linear and Ariel Perspective)
8 – Painting Shapes vs Painting Things
9 – The Power of Suggestion
10 – Light, Mid-tone and Dark Patterns
11 – Unity
12 – Contrast
13- Gradation
14- Movement
Let’s start with the three objectives, then work through the list of elements and principles.
Consider the first objective which is, #1(to communicate our fascination with the subject), then ask yourself, (what the painting is about, or what the purpose of the painting is?) If it’s about the sky, then let everything in the painting work to feature that idea. If it’s about a river, or a clump of trees, or a grouping of boulders below the trees, let the viewer know that, by not giving equal importance to everything in the picture. By doing this, you create a theme in the painting that makes it understandable to the viewer.
Then, objective #2 (to paint the subject in a way that reveals our equal fascination with the painterly means of expression used to produce it). For most artists this is just as much a thrill as depicting the scene itself. This is where facile brushwork and a thorough knowledge of the elements of painting come into play.
Note - Elements, this is just another way of saying tools, and there are five of them: Drawing, color, value, edges and brushwork.
In previous articles I have called these “The Painters Tool Box of Expression”. Whatever anyone wants to call them, they are our means of designing, as well as depicting light. These five tools are also expressive in and of themselves.
Note - Learning how to use the tools of design in isolation, is an ineffective way to paint. Without an understanding of design principles and the way light works, artists are just spinning their wheels trying to use them! These two concepts, give purpose to our brushstrokes and everything we do hinges on this understanding as well as mastery over these tools.
The third objective is a huge concept, because holding the viewers’ attention is central to a good design. #3 (To create an interesting abstract motif that will hold the viewer’s attention, by employing the principles of composition and design).
Most of us paint to please ourselves, it is true, but there is also a wider public to inspire with our work and that can be gratifying as well. A solid sale even further enhances gratification, knowing that someone wants to enjoy one of your creations for a long long time!
Here is a breakdown of the list of principles that will help you organize your compositions into better designs:
The principles of design start with, 1- balance, which primarily deals with weight distribution and proportion. This simply means that each of the five tools or elements can create weight in various parts of the painting, depending on how they are used and how much emphasis is placed on each. Large and small objects, linear brushstrokes vs massed in areas, bright and dull colors, dark vs light values, hard edges against soft, thick brushwork juxta posed with thin washes, all have a certain weight that must be controlled to maintain balance in the painting. It’s easy to overdo the eye-catching aspects of these combinations and feature too much pizzazz in your paintings. Be careful here, because more is not always better!
This then brings up, 2- dominance and 3- subordination, which requires that certain things are emphasized, while others play supporting roles; this further enhances the original purpose and theme of the painting.
In a Hollywood movie for example, if they want a certain leading man, or leading woman to stand out, they don’t surround them with supporting cast who are just as interesting in terms of good looks, intelligence, quick wit, or any other characteristic that would compete too much for attention.
This idea is no accident; use it in your work by letting some areas of the painting stand out and others fade into the background as a foil to the real star of the show. To accomplish this goal, it is often necessary to employ another of the principles listed above, 4- simplification. Simplicity of design is a good overall strategy in general; we sometimes overload our paintings with too much detail and wind up with a busy mass of “things” that are all competing for interest. This can be as simple as too many competing value and color shifts, known as over-modeling. The artist needs to develop the ability to edit the unnecessary items and thereby economize on the amount of “things” and unnecessary modeling, to achieve simplicity of design. As an example of this, you may have too many hard edges in your forest, which can be confusing; better to feature some edges and subordinate others. Think about how this idea can be applied to all of the other elements, or tools, and you will begin to see the possibilities!
Note - Everything in a good painting should have a reason for being in the picture, besides the obvious reason of, “Well, it just happened to be there”!
I remember a controversy that raged in a California art association, that I once belonged to. One of the members was adamant about including any number of objects in their paintings, simply because these objects happened to be at the painting site! For some reason, this person considered moving things in nature, some sort of sacrilege that was off limits. To illustrate the untenable nature of this argument, consider this. If a circus clown with a chimpanzee on a leash and an elephant, just happens to walk in front of you while you are painting, does that mean you have to include them in the scene? Obviously not, so why does a tree, which is not conducive to a good design, need to be included in the painting? Is it because nature placed it there? What if this tree were actually planted in that spot by a person, would that make a difference? Couldn’t it be moved to another spot, or left out altogether, if that would help the overall design? Excuse me for chuckling, people’s notions can get rather silly sometimes! Conversely, I don’t advocate that an artist should disregard nature and paint something completely out of their head while working on location. There ought to be a reason for being there, as an observer of nature, one would think.
I was once out painting with a fellow who turned a place that I call “Pollution Mountain” into a fairytale land complete with castle, and I had to wonder why he would take the changes that far. Pollution Mountain, as I like to call it, is a vista that has some spectacular snowcapped peaks in spring, coupled with industrial smoke stacks directly below, which is not too far from where I live. It makes for an interesting subject and I would usually take a drive out there each April or May for years, as a way of kicking off the warmer plein air season.
So, what should an artist do with unnecessary, or poorly designed “things” at the painting site? Objects such as fence posts and rocks for example, are good to put in your picture if they fit the general motif, but their placement should be moved to areas in the painting where they will do the most good. If a series of fence posts are too evenly spaced for instance, rearrange them to accommodate a better design. Maybe you need a spot of color over here, or some visual weight over there. Make the changes to suit your picture. Okay, use the clown, the chimp and the elephant, if it will do the job, but do it for artistic reasons, not because they just happened to walk in front of you!
Think about it, you are the artist; you are not recreating nature, but recording your visual and emotional response to it. Besides, nature is arranged naturally, it is not arranged to suit your painting. Act accordingly and edit economically, your work will be better as a result!
Now let me say something about 5- economy. How many “things” do we need to include in our paintings to make them work? If one or three or five will work well, will more be even better? Just like in a business, the “Law of Diminishing Returns” plays a part in our designs. In a restaurant for instance, ten employees may be just the right number to run things efficiently, while adding one more, won’t necessarily increase efficiency and sales. The extra help may even have the opposite effect, and disrupt an otherwise well-functioning business! Beware of this effect in your paintings, more is not always better and sometimes the addition of one more thing, gets you to the point of diminishing returns!
Let’s move on to 6- relationships. This principle needs to be thoroughly understood, because all paintings depend on a series of relationships of drawing, color, value, edges and brushwork to be effective. Each of these tools must work together to give the painting its characteristic look. Correctness in one area of the painting is highly dependent on how it functions in relationship to all adjacent areas. No one area or object in your painting stands alone, to be right it must do so as one part of the greater whole. As an example of what I am talking about, imagine that you are painting a distant mountain that doesn’t seem right in value and color until you paint in the sky. Suddenly, it all comes together once the correct relationship is established. It’s these types of comparisons that give meaning to each other in painterly representation. Learning to use design and light principles will make these relationships come alive as a byproduct of this knowledge.
There are also design relationships that constantly crop up when spacing objects in a painting. One example of this might be the spacing of trees. One tree by itself, if it is not placed dead center to the sides of the frame, will be just fine wherever it is put. As soon as you add another tree, it creates a relationship to the first tree, as well as the sides of the painting. Placing a third tree complicates matters even further and requires a little more ingenuity on the part of the artist to space without setting up monotonous rows, all lined up like toy soldiers! For these situations I usually rely on my knowledge of the “golden section” to produce spacing that is not overly mathematical in nature, but draws from this time-tested principle.
A lot could be said about relationships in the remaining elements, but you get the idea, it sometimes feels like you’re playing a game of chess; one move over here, can set up a relationship over there that has either good or dire consequences!
In addition to the flat spatial arrangement that we are after in a pure design, we must also consider the optical illusion of
7- depth, using linear and ariel perspective. Depth is achieved by using the afore mentioned tools, especially drawing to create proportions and linear perspective, as well as color, value and edges in the depiction of areal perspective. Simplification of distant objects in the painting and a general greying or cooling, will enhance perspective and the illusion of physical space.
Another important principle when painting, is to “see like an artist” rather than a mere casual viewer! This is accomplished by 8- painting shapes vs painting things. Again, this is an artistic way of approaching a visual reality by seeing through the lens of artistic representation. A good design procedure in landscape painting starts with a series of large general shapes. The artist must then check these for compatibility with other shapes in the painting, before proceeding to refine them further. Compatibility, generally means that no two shapes are the same in overall size and configuration. The refinements consist of modeling the forms and creating sub-shapes or shapes within shapes, until the painting is done. Certainly, this can involve individual objects like rocks and trees, after the larger shapes have been adjusted to work together. By then, these will have been well integrated into the overall design and not act independently of the whole.
In the studio this is often accomplished by working in several layers, scraping back unwanted textures from previous painting sessions, then cleaning-up, or simplifying what is already there. It’s interesting, how a painting that you are working on through several sessions in the studio, will begin to suggest ideas, if you are sensitive to its needs. Never rush to finish these works, even when bravado in brushwork is desired!
One last note on forms within the design, something needs to stand out and be rendered faithfully, so that the less defined objects in the painting can draw meaning from them. This brings up 9- the power of suggestion. It’s not desirable to render all objects in your painting equally, remember that forms in nature are not all seen in sharp focus and rendering some while suggesting others is often the best method of depiction.
10- Light, mid-tone and dark patterns, are value areas in the painting that connect to each other and often form abstract “super-shapes” which lend unity to the work. These super-shapes can either connect physically or mentally, through a relationship caused by their directional flow. Think of these as groupings of value-families that run throughout the painting’s positive and negative spaces. In the interest of variety, keep them from becoming too equal in their sizes. Don’t make them all the same, as in (1/3, 1/3, 1/3). That causes them to become too predictable and therefore boring!
Note - Boring, by the way, is the operative concept here, it’s one of the “why questions” when you’re faced with a negative critique. The “why” then becomes part of the solution to fixing what is wrong. When you know something is wrong and you also begin to understand why, then you also have what it takes to correct it!
Recently, I started working on a painting that I had sitting in a bin in my studio for several years. I would sometimes pull it out, look at it and then put it away again, not knowing how to fix it. Then the other day I pulled it out and within fifteen minutes or so, it was well on its way to becoming a credible painting. What changed? Only one thing, my level of understanding finally overtook the problem! As it turned out, there were value and pattern relationships that were wrong with the painting which I didn’t understand before. These relationships all had to do with the way light works, coupled with a better sense of design!
These value patterns are the unifying glue that hold a design together, so don’t underestimate the power that they exert on the success of your painting. In this way, light, mid-tone and dark patterns must transcend the physical realities of the scene into a decorative arrangement that is as much art as it is a true depiction of a scene outdoors. If the artist is careful not to destroy the feel of patterns and super-shapes after the modeling of forms are complete, the unifying effect will maintain their initial character which will lend strength to the whole design.
This leads us to 11- unity, which gives the overall work a satisfying appearance. All the principles discussed so far, can have a unifying effect on a painting and should be employed toward that end.
(On a side note), keep in mind that unity can be taken a bit too far and cross the border into “the land of, you guessed it, boring”! Remember, that all paintings need opposition to spice things up. Even if this opposition is minor in scope, it will go a long way to create balance and engage the viewer’s attention. Remember also, as stated at the beginning of this article: (A good design in a landscape painting, involves not only an interesting balance of lights, darks and mid-tones, which are arranged into patterns, but have well-proportioned mixtures of linear and mass elements as well).
So how does one safeguard against such trespasses? By the introduction of contrast. 12- Contrasts, are vitally important to the success of a painting which relies heavily on variety to keep various parts of the painting from dominating the scene in a negative way. Beware though, too much contrast can be just as bad as too much unity, which can lead to chaos, there needs to be a balance struck. Again, think of the elements and think of ways that different contrasts can be introduced, which need not be in all of them in one painting. A drawing contrast could be as simple as an opposing line. Another could be a contrast in color, such as a grayed down hue next to a more saturated color; the possibilities are endless! If the painting is about peace and unity, put more of that in, but if it is about contrast, change the order of importance.
A more subtle form of contrast is 13- gradation. Gradation is one of those important concepts that could get overlooked and may not be that noticeable to the uninitiated until it is pointed out. There may be gradations in all of the five tools of painting, meaning a gradual diminishing, increasing or subtle shift of emphasis in the way the tools can be handled. As one example in the area of color, if one were to depict a red barn in nature, the red applied to the side of the barn would naturally take on shifts in tone and temperature etc. In other words, it would not look as though it were freshly painted with a roller, with the same quality of red everywhere. Instead, the barn would take on gradations of color, temperature, value and intensity to match the effects of weather and light, along with a hearty dose of artistic whim. These changes are often gradual, and therefore the title, gradation. Keep in mind that gradations are not only found in color, but drawing, value, edges and brushwork as well. Think of all the ways an artist can use gradual contrasts in these other areas and you will begin to see the possibilities for using this exciting principle.
(Note) - Some further thoughts on unity and contrast. Here is another related underlying principle: Too much predictability is boring, while a bit of unpredictability engages the mind of the viewer, creating more interest, as a result. That is why those popsicle trees which are so famous, are something to be avoided; it’s their circular shape, again too predictable and therefore boring! Think of ways this principle can be applied to other aspects of the painting process and use it to enhance your work.
Last up on the list is movement. 14- Movement is that quality of the painting that keeps the eye traveling along dynamic paths of discovery. These paths should have a rhythmic flow along trajectories, which are characterized by various gradations in all, or some of the elements. Directional lines or paths are set up to enhance this movement and can aid the eye along corridors of value areas and linear movements. These help the viewer travel on a somewhat methodical path from one place to another, in a pleasing design.
So how does one develop a better sense of design? There are several ways that can aid in this quest, which I will list here. Drawing thumbnails of your scene in a sketchbook outdoors is a good way to work out potential problems before committing your brush to the canvas. In the studio, exploring your designs in vine charcoal before starting to paint is really helpful and allows for much re-arranging as preparation for the real thing.
There are also several mechanical aids that I have found useful for study purposes and scene selection. One is a good view finder, like the little gray ones that are so popular. You can even use your fingers to form a makeshift view finder, to isolate important parts of the overall view.
Another useful tool is a reducing glass, which looks a lot like a magnifying glass, but does just the opposite; it reduces the view in front of you to a smaller picture that makes spotting design problems easy. I’m not certain why this works, but I’m guessing that since we have all grown up in the age of print media, reducing the scene down to a smaller manageable size, enables us to recognize quality visual arrangements quickly, in a familiar format.
Lastly, some years ago one of my students gave me a little square red piece of Plexiglas that transforms the scene in front of you into a very simplified rendition of the many complex values that make up the natural environment. At first, I thought it was something that would help to figure out values, and not very effectively at that! But I have since found a different purpose for it. This little gem is extremely useful in spotting the most salient aspects of a possible subject, as well as subjects that lack the three essential values in the design patterns discussed above. To reiterate, they are patterns of lights, mid-tones and darks; I now use this tool, to quickly spot powerful motifs to paint. Yup, it’s a gadget that actually works!
Note - It’s important to remember that a good scene starts with a good design, based on abstract qualities that operate independently of the many alluring details that can mesmerize the unsuspecting artist into making faulty subject choices.
I hope these ideas have inspired and helped many of you!
Until next time, John-
John Hughes is a landscape painter with over 35 years’ experience. He teaches workshops and classes through the Scottsdale Artist’s School, as well as Salt Lake Community College and other venues. He has written numerous articles on painting for Fibonacci Fine Arts Digest, 15 Bytes and Outdoor Painter. He has had feature articles in several regional, national and international publications, including 15 Bytes Magazine, Pratique des Arts and Plein Air Magazine. His work was recently featured in the book, “Painters of the Grand Tetons”, by Donna and James Poulton. John’s gallery representation includes, Mountain Trails Gallery, in Jackson Hole, Wyoming and Montgomery Lee Fine Art, in Park City, Utah. John is a member of the Rocky Mountain Plein Air Painters, Plein Air Painters of Utah and the American Impressionist Society. To view John’s work and arrange for a workshop in your area, visit his website at johnhughesstudio.com. He can also be reached by e mail at: [email protected]
