Controlling M-Faces

Above is a Sargent watercolor of Venice. I have written before about unity of effect and subordination of detail to the larger masses in which they are contained. In this post I want to show what happens if you don't control your emphasis. To do this I have messed up a few fine paintings using Photoshop.

Where you put your emphasis is desperately important in picturemaking. You might have intended to say "building with some windows", but instead said "building with some windows" by not subordinating the windows to the facade of the structure. Below is the same Sargent with the windows and details in the building exaggerated.

 

The building is no longer subordinated to the Gondolas in the foreground. It fights with them now for our attention . The picture no longer clearly tells you where to look, it is beginning to have two subjects rather than one, the boats. In the upper version the gondolas are dominant, in the lower they no longer are. This is a matter of emphasis. Just as in a stage play there is a star or lead role and there are supporting actors, if one of the supporting actors gets self important and begins blocking or outshining the lead he has to be chided, if not eviscerated by the director.

You as a picture maker are the director and it is important to keep the actors on your stage in check, lest they steal the show from your lead and distract the audience from the story that you want to tell. 

IF EVERYTHING IN A PAINTING IS OF EQUAL IMPORTANCE, THEN NOTHING IS IMPORTANT!

When making a design it is usually a mistake to give everything an equal emphasis, although it might be good in a blueprint or a schematic drawing. Part of a design is deciding what is important and what is not, what is the dominant, and what needs to be subordinated to that. Often this is about keeping your masses "big". That is, not chopping up every shape into an assemblage of the smaller shapes within it.

© The Estate of Edward Seago, courtesy of Portland Gallery www.portlandgallery.com

 Above is an Edward Seago, I know I post a lot of his paintings but he is a great hero to me.  Below is the painting again, after my tender ministrations.

I have overemphasized the detail in the buildings behind the pointy feet children. It throws the whole thing out of whack.  Seago  subordinated the windows and doors beautifully to the larger and more important shape of the building itself. I have reversed the polarity, now the details are more  assertive than the larger form upon which they ride, and the unity of the painting has been destroyed. The building, formerly a supporting actor, has taken over the stage like a girl in the chorus line naked with a traffic cone on her head.

© The Estate of Edward Seago, courtesy of Portland Gallery www.portlandgallery.com

 Here is another Seago, and below is my damaged version.

I have exaggerated the windows in the ocher colored building on the left, and lightened the contrast in the group of boats at center. Now instead of quietly occupying that side of the painting, the building is too assertive. It is stealing the show from the boats which were the artist's intended focus in the painting. Now the boats lead you through the painting to the building.

Every element you put into a painting has to be appraised for it's importance. Ask yourself "is this object important or should it be subordinated to the whole, so what is important can shine?" Sometimes during a critique an artist will hold their hand up to block from their view a part of the painting. When they do that it is usually because some element  has been overstated and is interfering with either the balance or the unity of the painting. You only get one subject per picture, if you try to have two the picture will fail. It has a problem I call "one for each eye" There must be

 one dominant subject and the other forms must be subordinated to that.

How you set your emphasis is a matter of your personal choice, and when you make choices you are making art. There are cameras that are made to be left strapped to trees in the forest to shoot pictures of passing wildlife. When the unwitting animal steps into the machines vision, it takes a picture. The machine is not an artist. It makes an image, but no decisions as to what that image will look like. Transcription is only accounting. Noise is not music. Like form, or arrangement of shapes, emphasis is a design decision and a human imposition of selective order onto nature. Nature in itself is not art, art is the product of a human decision about how to portray nature. This explains entirely why so little truly great art is currently being produced by the deceased.