the DrawingNewsletter

The Secret Key of the MastersMichael R. Britton

October 2004

In this issue of artacademy.com’s The Drawing Newslet-ter I will be presenting critically important information that has not been published since 1963. That over 40 years!

When looking at Master works there are three elements at work. These are the visual, the emotive and the con-stuct. The visual is the craft, the technique of drawing and painting; the emotive is the spirit; the construct is the semiotics, or language, of art. For a work to be suc-cessful all three elements must be present. What I mean by ‘successful’ is that a work must engage the viewer. It must immediately communicate an intent to the viewer’s viscera. Otherwise the drawing or painting will be dis-missed. Every day we are bombarded with thousands of images which our subconscious mind edits and filters.

It is not enough for a work to be technically excellent; nor does an emotionally charged painting that cannot communicate its message and intent succeed. A work must have both craft and spirit.

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The construct, the language of painting, is within the realm of the intellectual process of making art. Cubism, abstract expressionism, realism – these are all constructs, languages. An excellent resource on the constructive element in draw-ing and painting is John Berger’s Selected Essays. (I’ll pro-vide a link to this book at the end of the Newsletter.)

The Visually impressive element (the craft), too, has three components: these are Color, Measure and Design.

Color, as I am sure you know, is the prime material of paint-ing. Color theory is generally well represented in art school’ curricula. It does not take long before an artist realizes the need for understanding color theory in order to maximize color interaction and harmony. Above is a simple color harmony (it is a secondary har-monic triad (green, orange, violet) with tint, tone and shade applied. It is unlikely that an artist relying solely on intuition will progress much beyond this.

The second component of the Visually impressive is Measure. Herein lies the secret key of the Masters. Even more important than color is the underlying compositional schematic. This schematic is the Engine of a painting. It not only determines the relative sizing and placements of the objects, or figures, in a work, but also the emotional impact upon the viewer. Color is extremely important, yet color alone will not carry a painting. If so, then a well color-harmonized sofa would have the same emotional impact as a painting.

This Engine is known as both Dynamic Symmetry and Symphonic Composition. They are one and the same, just different names. Shape and area, like color, have emotional qualities that directly com-municate to our viscera. The emotional qualities of shape appear in our language. For example, ‘why the long face?’. Imagine the ‘happy face’ symbol being within a long oval instead of a circle. It would read completely different as a happy face tinged with melancholy.

Using the same color harmony as above, I’ve applied it to a simple Dynamic composition. The second illustration is much stronger. Combining both dynamic symmetry with applied color results in more powerful paintings. The shape that I’ve used here is a Root 2 rect-angle with overlapping rabatements. Don’t be frightened by the terminology, this is easily learned and by the end of this lesson you will have a basic working knowledge

oI TheGoldenNumber

This symbol is known as Phi and is the 21st letter of the Greek alphabet. Phi has a numerical value of 1.618. Plato ascribed this value as the Number of the World Soul. Phi is the Golden Number.

Soon or later every artist will hear about the Golden number, the golden mean, the golden rectangle, etc. This is not the Secret Key but it is a very important tool.

Every natural component of the Universe relates, in one way or another, to Phi. A well-known example is the logaryth-mic spiral of seashells. Computer archi-tecture is another. (This is the Fibonacci sequence which is 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89 ... divide 55 into 89 and the result is 1.618. This ratio will never change.)

Constructing the Golden Rectangle is quite easy.

Step 1: Begin with a square.

Step 2: Find the center point of the base of the square (use two overlapping diago-nals for accuracy.)

Step 3: Using the center point draw a diagonal to the upper right corner of the square (‘B’). This will be the radius of a circle.

Step 1: Begin with a square.

Step 2: Fix the center point of the base of the square. Use two overlapping diago-nal for accuracy.

B

Step 3: From the center point draw a line to B. This will be the radius of a circle.

Step 4: Draw a quarter-circle. This is an arc or quadrant.

Step 5: Now envelope this arc with another rectangle. This additional rectangle is called the Reciprocal. The entire rectangle is the Golden Rectangle (1.618).

Incidentally, the Reciprocal is also a Golden Rectangle. It reciprocates the area of the entire rectangle.

This is the unadorned Golden Rectangle. Just looking at this rectangle you can feel its pulsing power. I really hate to use a cliche, but this rectangle is One with the Universe. The Parthenon was constructed according to the dictates of the Golden Rectangle.

Gustave Courbet is universally regarded as the father of ‘Realism’. He painted an empiric realism with a clinical eye. Things are what they are, unadorned and unidealised, especially the landscape and nature. His career marked the end of lyrical and literary Romanticism. Courbet, as did Baudelaire in literature, reacted aggressively to the facile and cloying, pretty little pictures of languid late-Romantic painting. Realism strode upon the stage in a brusque manner. Courbet often chose ‘difficult’, even obscene, subjects. The Trout, 1871 is stark and brutal in effect. It is composed strictly to the Golden rectangle. This painting is an autobiographical metaphor in which he signed the canvas in an explanatory phrase ‘Courbet in vinculis faciebat’ that translates to: ‘Courbet in chains made it”. Imprisoned, and subsequently exiled, Courbet identifies with the agony of a fish on a hook.

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Applying the Golden Rectangle’s schematic to The Trout you can begin to see how basic geometry can lend significant power and force to a very simple painting.

There is much more to this, of course, but it is an excellent starting point.

We now come to a very controversial and troubling juncture. Given that the Golden Rectangle, or for that matter, all of the Dynamic Rectangles, is so powerful why is it that you cannot readily purchase a pre-stretched Golden Canvas?

The recent history of painting and art education bears much responsibility. In composition there are two competing schools of thought: one is the Octavol, the musical consonances, the other is the Dynamic. Octavol composition presupposes that divisions of eight, the musical consonances, readily apply to visual art making. Unfortunately this is not the case. The reason Octavol canvases are readily available as pre-stretched canvases (i.e., 18 x 24”, 24 x 36” and the ‘bastardized’ 16x20” (which is not Octavol) is that there is a small finite number of them. They are economical to produce and easy for art stores to stock. Imagine owning an art store and having to stock thousands of different size canvases. You would be out-of-business within a month. The tragedy is that as soon as you put your hot little hands on one of these Octavol canvases your painting is doomed. There are exceptions, of course, Master painters such as Turner, Lucien Freud and Stanley Spencer fuse the Octavol with the Dynamic. This is taught in the Symphonic Composition DVD Workshop.

Prior to the 1960’s all well-trained artists were drilled in Dynamic Symmetry. Today, most university and college fine art programmes are predicated on problem-based learning and critical studies. This is important, no question, but the very real problem is that students are left to develop their drawing and painting skills on their own or elsewhere. Most flounder.

As an example, one of the most radical painters of the 19th Century, Van Gogh used Dynamic Symmetry to construct the engines of their paintings.

Don’t be daunted by the seeming complexity, it is built up step-by-step. The two main points of interest here is the green tree on the left and the ‘edge’ of the left-side of the canvas. See how both of these elements are united by the constructing arc?

This is an early work by Willem de Kooning, the primary force behind Abstract Expres-sionism. Like color theory and figure/portrait drawing the lessons of composition become ingrained into your subconscious through training and working.

Both Van Gogh and de Kooning were classi-cally trained.

The Secret KeyThe golden rectangle is fairly well known. It is an excellent starting point for constructing dynamic compositions. Once you understand the hidden engine, the underlying geometry, of great paintings your appreciation and enjoyment of them increases significantly. It is like having the magic key to the kingdom of master painting.

I’ve mentioned the 16 x 20” canvas as being a ‘bastard-ized’ shape. The 16 x 20” shape is generally pleasing and is the canvas of choice for many painters. Almost every painting course offered throughout the world has the 16x20” canvas on the supply list. And herein lies a major tragedy. No matter how well crafted the picture if it is composed on a 16x20” canvas (pictorial surface) it will never compare to a master work. It is like a master pianist playing on a slightly out-of-tune piano. Have you ever seen a great painting having a pictorial surface of 16x20”? There are some great paintings that come very close to the ratio of the 16x20” (4:5).

Courbet’s masterpiece, Woman in the Waves, 1868 is one. This painting is in the collection of the Metro-politan Museum of Art in New York City.

From the Golden Rectangle I am going to illustrate the basic compositional dynamic of the Woman in the Waves. Let’s begin with the Golden Rectange. The only difference is that I will contruct it out to the left-side of the square. You can construct a Golden, or dynamic rectangle from any side of the square. Paintings are generally composed to be read from left to right, this happens quite naturally. Paintings that are designed to be read from right to left are called in sinisterium.

Next, I am going to use the entire base (AB) of the golden rectangle as a radius of a circle. ‘A’ will be the center of this downward arc.

AB

From the Rabatement of the Golden Rectangle drop down a vertical line so that it intersects the arc at ‘C’. (I’ve introduced you to a new term here. A Rabatement is applying a square within a dynamic rectangle. It is an extremely powerful tool in composition.)

AB

C

Now complete the rectangle for AC. For clarity I have shaded this new rectangle with a shade of blue.

AB

C

This blue rectangle is the Root Phi rectangle. It is the square root of 1.618 which is 1.272.

Now let’s go back to the 16x20” canvas. Take the 16” and multiply it by 1.272. (I use a calculator which I find to be an indispensable tool in creating my compositions.) You get 20.352. For a lousy 0.352”, or a little less than 3/8’s of an inch, millions of otherwise fine paintings have been consigned to the trash heap. Consider, for a moment, how hard you work to get your drawings in proportion. If you are doing a portrait, a 3/8” error in, say, the size of the nose is a very noticeable error.

The very sad thing is that all artists struggle with their work. We agonize over the proportions, the color, the placement of objects within our composition, yet by choosing the 16x20” the work is doomed at the onset. 16x20” is dead. It cannot be brought back to life.

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rectangle

AB

Courbet’s Woman in the Waves fits exactly into our scheme. Courbet deliberately composed this painting to the Root Phi dynamic rectangle. There is much more to this, but it is outside the scope of a Newsletter.

If you are a beginner, do not think that this information is only for advanced and professional artists. The sooner you become knowledgeable with dynamic composition the faster you will learn how to draw and paint. You will have trained your unconscious mind to recognize dynamic shapes and proportions. We all do our best drawing and painting from the unconscious mind. But it has to be trained. I have seen this happen over and over again.

A More Dynamic Portrait

Employing a dynamic rectangle in your work is an important first step. The next step is dynamically arranging the elements within your pictorial framework.

Using the tools the I have introduced you to I will re-compose the portrait drawing I did of this young woman using the Root Phi rectangle.

This drawing is currently composed to a 16x20” canvas. To the untrained eye it appears satisfactory. Although one problem here is that the head is ‘floating’ in space.

There are several ways of constructing a dynamic canvas. The best, and most powerful, method is an internal construction. That requires a more comprehensive understanding and more tools.

The basic method is external. That is applying a dynamic rectangle unto the work and re-position-ing it dynamically. I’ll do this using the Root Phi rectangle.

The first step is to ascertain a pleasing width for our pictorial surface. I’m working by intuition here. A trained intuition!

I’ve chosen a width of 9” at the two vertical lines. This will tighten up the composition sig-nificantly.

Now the height needs to be set. Since I have decided upon the Root Phi scheme I will simply multiply 9”, my width, by 1.272 (which, as you remember is the ratio of Root Phi). My height then will be 9” X 1.272 = 11.448”. I’ll round this off to 11.45”, a little less than 11 1/2”.

This may take some trial and error to get the best placement.

This composition is better, but let’s see if we can improve upon this. Remember the Rabatement tool? Let’s see how relating an element with a square within this dynamic rectangle works.

Applying the Rabatement, or square, from the base of the rectangle upwards aligns with the second tier of the flow-er’s petals. This works quite well. It is subtle and the viewer’s unconscious mind will sense and appreciate it.

This composition is dramatically more powerful than the first one. This is the same drawing but presented in a more dynamic framework.

To recap, I have done two things. One is tightening up the focus so that the head is not floating in space, and second, I’ve replaced the 16x20” format with a Root Phi dynamic composition.

This is the so-called Secret Key of the Mas-ters. Frankly, it is a secret only because of the failings of fine art education today.

It is simplistic to blame the people working in fine art institutions; they are not with-holding information. Many of them work diligently and with the utmost integrity. But information and knowledge gets lost. Historical events such as World Wars and revolutions play their part. So does fash-ionable art movements. Teachers teach the way they were taught.

Color harmony and dynamic composition together can produce extremely powerful work.

Recommended reading

Selected Essays by John Berger

Elements of Dynamic Symmetry by Jay Hambidge

The Geometry of Art & Life by Matila Ghyka

The Painter’s Secret Geometry by Charles Bouleau