ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DUMB DESIGN IDEAS, UPBEAT

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DUMB DESIGN IDEAS

UPBEAT

Here is a question I got in the comments today;
"I'm a little confused Stape. You say the painting goes down (which I can see), but then you say that you want your paintings to go up - which the painting does actually do - it goes up to the right. If it is going down to the left, it is going up to the right. Isn't that what you said you want your paintings to do?"

Look at the example above also from the Nevelson master and the example from yesterday below. The lines and forms in the painting above, carry your eye up and to the right. The lines and the forms in the example below carry your eye down and to the left.

Part of the expression of sentiment in a landscape design is conveyed by the direction of the lines and forms. A painting can be designed or arranged in such a way as to be either full of spring, or sagging lines. Sagging lines are somber or even tragic. Springy lyrical lines are UPBEAT. Lines can be rhythmical or quiet, jagged or calm. The quality of the lines is decided by the artist.

There is another option, not to decide. Generally a photograph has whatever kind of lines were in front of it, some having one nature and the others, another. When I copy a photograph or studiously imitate nature with the greatest care, I often get a result which is arrhythmic. The lines aren't designed particularly, they just describe the objects in the view. In order to have my lines convey a mood, I must make them do so. I will be unable to observe this ordered scheme into a painting, this must be installed. This is bending the appearance of nature to suit your design ends. Gee, I hope that clarified it for you.


Here are a few more biographical notes on the rediscovery tyro painter Dirk Van Assaerts;

With a ravenous wife and big debts for education, mortgage and carriage, Dirk was motivated to work very hard at his master painter job in the conformity district daycare center. Being young and relatively quick compared to the other tongue swallowers at the center, Dirk naturally excelled in his work. He was promoted after several years and became an administrative director, overseeing a cadre of young art school graduates teaching three year olds how to paint. Because the daycare ministry was growing and had an important mission, they lobbied for and got "right to creativity knows no age barrier legislation". The District General stated in a well received speech before the Assembly of Compulsion "if we train all of our children to be artists in only a generation all adults will be artists too!". Dozens of able administrators were needed to run the massive program.

With a little more income from his promotion the little family flourished. Dirk named his second daughter, Flexibility, after one of the seven virtues. All of this working and reproducing didn't stop Dirk from painting, oh, no! Every weekend and occasionally after work (when he had the strength left) he would paint on location in the Dutch country side. But some weekends he had to work on the house, and worse than that, some weekends his wife insisted that "as a family it was important to go to the lake or visit her parents in Elitesberg". Her family had provided lots of potatoes for Dirks young family and they deserved to see their grand children at least every other weekend didn't they? Dirk found the time he formerly had to paint was rapidly being wasted on his family.