Landscape Painting In Watercolor Week 4 - Main Subject and Focal Point Pre-Class Info Up to this point, we’ve covered two important ideas that will provide a strong design foundation in your paintings. The first was the of dividing our 2D picture plane into three Planes of Space. The second was the addition of deliberately applying a distinct value to each plane of space – one light, one mid-value, one dark. Although the mental switch is challenging, these two ideas alone will change your approach to painting and enhance your creativity. MAIN SUBJECT Every painting should have one single main subject. This is the one object or element that the viewer should see, if they see nothing else. The lack of a single main subject is one of the major flaws in many, many paintings. And, it is often facilitated by the over-reliance on photos and the massive amount of detail included in modern hi-resolution pictures. How To Decide? Sometimes the main subject is very obvious. Our painting project from last week is a good example. The large foreground barn dominates the picture plane – it takes up at least ¼ of the entire space.
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Landscape Painting In Watercolor
Week 4 - Main Subject and Focal Point
Pre-Class Info
Up to this point, we’ve covered two important ideas that will provide a strong design foundation in
your paintings.
The first was the of dividing our 2D picture plane into three Planes of Space.
The second was the addition of deliberately applying a distinct value to each plane of space – one
light, one mid-value, one dark.
Although the mental switch is challenging, these two ideas alone will change your approach to
painting and enhance your creativity.
MAIN SUBJECT
Every painting should have one single main subject. This is the one object or element that the
viewer should see, if they see nothing else. The lack of a single main subject is one of the major
flaws in many, many paintings. And, it is often facilitated by the over-reliance on photos and the
massive amount of detail included in modern hi-resolution pictures. How To Decide? Sometimes
the main subject is very obvious. Our painting project from last week is a good example. The large
foreground barn dominates the picture plane – it takes up at least ¼ of the entire space.
The thumbnail value
composition also emphasizes
the foreground barn but
without any color or detail
information.
What two specific things were
done in the value sketch to help
visually emphasize the
foreground barn, even though it
is included in a larger value
shape?
FOCAL POINT
Once you’ve decided on a main subject, the next step is to decide where it will be placed on your
picture plane. There are many possible locations, even those that are un-conventional and break
the “rules” of composition. But, as an introduction we’ll start with a simple and powerful system
that is also easy.
Golden Sections / Golden Means
On any rectangular picture plane there are four visual sweet spots. They have various names,
Golden Sections being one of the common ones. Golden Sections occur at the intersections of the
four Golden Means.
Golden Means can be placed just
by thinking in terms of ‘thirds’. If
you roughly divide your picture
plane into thirds vertically and
horizontally, the four lines will
intersect in four places – the
Golden Sections.
The red crosses in the image at
right illustrate the Golden Sections
on this picture plane.
The ‘L”
An easy way to plot the Golden Sections is to think of the letter ‘L’. The ‘L’ shape represents a
subset of the Golden section in that it is 2/3rds of a Golden Mean on the longest dimension and
2/3rds of a Golden Mean on the shortest dimension. And, it can be rotated around and flipped
horizontally or vertically to locate any of the four Golden Sections.
Let’s take look at last week’s class project with two ‘L’s overlaid on the finished painting.
It’s easy to find the four Golden Sections – two at the corners of the ‘L’s and two at the
intersections of the ‘L’s.
Notice that the upper right Golden Section lies on the large roof of the barn – creating a visual
bullseye right on the object that is our Main Subject.
Subtle Superpower Of The ‘L’
Notice also, that the part of the L that starts at the bottom edge, 1/3rd of the way in from the
right edge passes through the small piece of vertical wall that connects the two sections of the
barn. Likewise, the other arm of this L starts 1/3rd of the way down from the top on the left edge,
and works it way to the right passing along just under the top edge of the roof on the smaller
section of the barn.
The “Superpower” is in the way these two visual paths help draw the viewers eye to our bullseye
focal point.
PRE-CLASS WORK
View these video tutorials to expand on Value Sketching and Color Studies:
Value Sketching Part 2 – More Complex Arrangements
Converting A Value Sketch Into A Realistic Value Range
Converting A Simple Value Sketch To Color
Thumbnail Value Sketches
Once you’ve watched the videos, use the image below as the starting point for your composition