Focus
 

In the past I

Thanks, Steven -

I've always loved your explanations, whether a critique or an explanatory essay, as you have done here.

You're focusing in (yes, that was intentional) on one aspect of an area of study I'm very intent on studying - that of composition. I was fortunate enough to be able to see the Andrew Wyeth exhibit in Atlanta. I have learned from my reading how carefully he designs his compositions, and, yes, absolutely, he has focal points, and leads the eye around the painting. To me, that is one of the key marks of the professional artist.

Without a good composition, including a focal point, a beautifully painted piece will be lacking.

I hope you will consider sharing more of your thoughts on other aspects of composition.

Glad you found something here, Julie.

There is so much material, so many sources, that it can be overwhelming. Most of us spend too much time searching for magic, instead of ensuring that the fundamentals are in place.

Fundamentals are the magic. (That's what Jay Moore means when he says "This isn't a trick.") The rest is either pure genius, which I don't happen to have inherited, or paste jewelry, which is in abundance.

Composition first, using lines and values and focal areas. Failing that, your 3- or 53-pigment palette is irrelevant, because you're icing a cake made of crushed glass and bent steel.

It will now be a long hiatus, but I will come back to post traditional and contemporary portrait images, or URL links, that exemplify attention to focal areas in the composition. I would encourage any other members to do the same here, whenever they wish.

By the way, focal areas and "sight lines," or movement through the piece, are related but different concepts. Multiple focal areas aren't "acceptable" simply because there's a "sight line" moving the eye from one to the other. That's what Jay Moore is warning about, when talking about the mountain-river-tree movement of focus problem.

I liked your article very much and I hope to read more articles like this in the future.

I always liked to focus on one point in my drawings and paintings, to have a focal area, it's good to know that it was not inappropriate.

Clarity of Words = Teacher of Great Worth
 

Thank you, Steven, for taking the time and effort to post such valuable lessons. You, too, should be writing regular articles that you are paid to write for an art magazine or an avenue like The World of Portrait Painting. You have a real way with words which = a gifted teacher.

Thanks for this, Steven. I also enjoy Jay Moore's work (I think I learned about him through you).

I particularly liked your comparison between a strong simple composition and "a simple tune, played well". The fundamentals, thoroughly mastered, will accomplish more than all the other "sturm and drang" we can stir up and throw on the canvas.

Thanks, folks, glad there's something here that's interesting.

Michele, yes, exactly -- you know, I had a few moments back in those years when I thought, boy, I hope "they" don't ever find out that this isn't as hard as it looks.

But so many of us continue to insist on making it harder than it is. I think we keep being sucked in by the pyrotechnics, which burn out in seconds.

Concept. Composition, Value design. Thumb-nail sketch. Focal areas. Commitment to the idea. Finally, color to bring it all into play.

We make it so hard. Fundamentals make it so much easier and enjoyable. With that "outline," you already know what you want to say. You can spend your energy on how to say it.

But it's still hard (at least for me)!

One quick addendum (came to me on the commute to work this morning). Jay mentioned this, and I forgot to.

It's not the case that only your focal area has the most interesting color, contrast, edges and detail, with all of that muted everywhere else. It should have some of that, different from the treatment elsewhere in the picture.

So it may well be that you'll have an entire piece that is brilliant in hue, or perhaps flat in value. In the latter case, say, you simply may not be able to "punch up" the focal area with a lot of value contrast (unless you invent it). That's fine -- just punch it up with more color than the other parts of the painting, or perhaps more detail.

In some way, distinguish the focal area from the rest of the picture, to catch the viewer's eye and say, "Here -- this is what I most wanted to show you."

Steven,

Thanks for the postings. I'd like to ask you to please keep your eye out for my next post. It is a piece I just finished today and my goal was to create depth and a focal point. I would appreciate your views.

I will allow about a week for it to dry and then I'll photograph it for my portfolio and a post.

Glad to, John. An advisement, though, that I'm hitting the road for an extended period, through early June, so don't read anything into a nonresponse, or at least a very tardy one.

By the way, since it's now available for viewing, Marvin's PSA prizewinner is a strong case-in-point for focus, and it calls into play the note in the "addendum" above. The piece is detailed and rich throughout, and so his focus is largely a matter of value. Squint at the image and all question about what the painting is "about" dissipates. The remainder of the painting supports that focal area.

Steven your article is very well written, once again. Thanks for the compositional clarity.

I always love reading your articles as you have a knack of portraying your ideals and knowledge that you want to focus on in a way that is very student friendly and not filled with ambiguous words.

You should be making your millions as a arts writer/teacher.

Hope your journeys are sure and safe.

I couldn't help but steal this from a news story from today's fodder:

Niccol

Steve,

Here is the painting I refered to concerning focus. My intention was to create depth and a focus point. I needed the depth to pull off the piece and the composition lent itself to a composition to force the eye to the action of the subject.

Here's the post from the unveiling section.

[I have to preface the following by saying that when I opened your image up this morning on a different monitor using a better browser, the effect was markedly different from what I was looking at when I wrote the following and made the image adjustment. It may well be that in another day, my take on this would be different, but that "other day" will be in mid-June sometime, so I'll just post this for whatever use you may be able to make of it.]

Okay, John, as I wrote elsewhere, this is nicely executed, a thoughtful capturing of another artist at work, in his

Yes, just dropping in for a moment to look with "fresh" eyes, I've gone a little too dark with the "non-focal" areas and, if nothing else, altered the mood of the piece. I'll see if I can't ease up on that and re-post the image, because I do think that the direction is right, it just went too far. It's hard to translate subtlety between differently calibrated monitors.

Meanwhile, anyone with Photoshop or other imaging software could capture this image and experiment with brightening the entire image or parts of it. The "focus" idea is to make the eye go to the focal area through some combination of intense or subdued color, strong or slight contrast, hard or soft edges, little or lots of detail.

All of which is NOT to say that everything outside the focal area will be bland and indistinct and unimportant. It's a matter of the elements in relation to each other, not "the important thing and then all the other stuff."

Steve,

Thanks for your generous response. I am grateful for your thoughts and especially the way you thread them together.

Per the topic of these discussions I am eager to learn the opportunities and the various ways that we as artists can manipulate our art to achieve these goals. I hope that we can all participate and I know that I have learned a lot already and am looking forward to learning more.

Please everyone, jump in.

John,
There are many roads to Rome.
Another method to put the focus on a figure is to darken the shadow areas of the figure and keep the highlights brighter, so that it stands out from the more even values of the background.

I have only darkened the shadows a bit so that you will know the idea.

Allan

Yes, that works, too, punching up the value design within the figure itself. Whatever it takes to distinguish it, and cause the eye's "needle" to swing toward that magnetic pole in the picture.

Not to beat this to death, but I raised the value a little on my earlier version and am curious to see how it will appear on the various monitors I see these things on over the course of the days.

Some combination of those last two images, including Allan's deepening of the body shadows on the figure, is probably getting about optimum.

It probably seems to some like we're "having our way" with John's painting, trying to insist on a single course. In fact we're just making some rather gross adjustments to try to illustrate a few ideas about how the focal area can be given its rightful prominence in the overall presentation. As Allan suggested, there are many ways to accomplish this -- but it's useful to do so, by whatever means you choose.