Composition - examples of note

SB Wang · 07-25-2006, 01:53 PM

A valuable issue, Mike and all, about which I also wrote an article years ago, edited by Cynthia Daniel, submitted to American Artist magazine. Douglas? ' book mentioned this point.

Mike McCarty · 07-26-2006, 07:12 PM

Hello Schubert, hope things are going well for you.

One of SB's beautiful portraits.

Mike McCarty · 07-26-2006, 07:37 PM

Instead of adding one to make it three, J.S.S. decided to subtract one to make it one. In matters of design it seems to me that this takes on the same attributes as a single person composition. Of course the young girl doesn't get the same full play as the mother(?), but isn't this the way it should be.

Here is a contemporary artist Allan Banks. Mr. Banks uses the book in this familiar scene, along with some background accompaniment to make this composition look natural. Unlike the flowing gowns of years ago, these are the types of every day scenes we are likely to be commissioned to portray today.

And then there's the occasional two tree requests - father and son.

SB Wang · 07-27-2006, 10:46 AM

My friend Mike:
You are in Florida! How nice you posted my picture twice! Much obliged! That girl was in Kissimmee, FL. Cynthia likes it, too. I wonder if she looked like that way when in that age. I got this commission from Cynthia Culpeper of Orlando, deceased 5 years ago. I painted a portrait of her husband for a gift.
I suffered political persecution in China. Thank you for your caring.

Mike McCarty · 07-30-2006, 10:41 AM

Thanks SB, and thanks too for quickly sending the fifty bucks. If you want another posted just use that same PayPal number BR549.

*****

You say there

Mike McCarty · 08-06-2006, 11:30 AM

It seems that no one liked this two person composition of R. L. Stevenson and his wife by J S Sargent, as noted below:

The first [portrait of Stevenson], an endeavor of 1884, now missing and most likely destroyed by Stevenson

Mike McCarty · 08-06-2006, 01:18 PM

And another amazing watercolor by JSS.

Here it seems that Sargent worked his composition through the use of il-defined shapes of shadow and light. It's amazing how much we are able read, not so much by an images literal depiction, but in the context in which we find it.

Linda Brandon · 09-10-2006, 02:42 PM

[QUOTE=Mike McCarty]This guy surely holds the record for number of paintings of whacked off heads. Oh well, since he

Michele Rushworth · 09-10-2006, 03:24 PM

Quote:

it does seem to me that the most interesting gift we can give to the viewer as artists is our point of view. What we see; what we choose to emphasize; where we stand as we paint - all these change as we step to the left or step to the right. All information comes to us based on where we are and what we receive, or what we chose to understand. (Anyone who has ever worked in journalism will recognize the unsettling experience of being at the same event as other journalists and reading the various - and often wildly divergent - accounts of the "same" experience. Nobody really has the same experience as someone else.)

Very well put. As you may know, Monet and Renoir painted together often and there are two paintings (in different museums, unfortunately) that show how they approached painting "the same thing" on the verysame day. The subject matter was a group of people standing near the water. As you might guess, Monet's painting emphasized the water and Renoir's emphasized the people. Two totally different approaches to the same "content".