A Kensett beak

John Frederick Kensett, Eatons Neck, courtesy of artrenewal.org

Here is a famous painting that contains, in my opinion, a beak. It may be the ultimate beak painting. I suppose it works, Kensett has kept the gap to the left of the beak structure broad and that allows the eye passage around it, but the painting still makes me uncomfortable. Notice that the tip of the beak falls exactly halfway across the painting.
There is a stillness and hushed magic to this painting, probably because of the simplicity of the sky and water that make it interesting and full of feeling. But again I wish it weren't so beaky.

There is an old rule of thumb that suggests never to place anything dead in the center of a painting. However bring something up to the center works rather well and artist do it frequently. Perhaps had this beak crossed that center line it would not have worked. There may be something to keeping it to one side of the middle. So here is perhaps another solution to the beak problem.

The painting is in a format called a double square. That is, it is twice as long as it is high. This is an interesting format, good for fields and oceans and places with a broad view and a low horizon.The squarer a picture is the more likely it is to feel intimate, interiors are good in square formats.the more elongated it becomes the more sublime or suitable to the expression of great distance.There are of course lots of exceptions to this and in fact the whole design thing is full of exceptions. That is why they are not rules, but principles or suggestions. That is why it is important to be able to appraise whether a design is working in your particular situation, rather than just plugging a design template in and believing your job is done. Nothing in design works all of the time and there are great paintings that seem like they shouldn't work but do.

I don't like calling design ideas rules, maybe secrets or principles or serving suggestions, but not rules. Still a knowledge of design helps to make the world paintable. At the root of the whole design thing is simplification. Begin by simplifying and work outward from there.

DEBEAKIFICATION

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DUMB DESIGN IDEAS
DEBEAKIFICATION

Often referred to as the Nevelson master, the works of the unknown Dutch tyro are finally receiving the attention that has so long been denied them. Their suitability as a teaching device has bestowed on them an importance that their quality could never have achieved. Below is a second very similar painting from the Nevelson master believed to have been retouched by another (and modestly more skilled) hand. In this version a number of changes have been made to ameliorate the faults of the other shown above.

A pattern of lights and darks has been established over, under, around, and through the beak area to camouflage its existence. The shape of the beak has been subordinated to a value structure that arrays lights and darks in shapes unrelated to its beakish outline. This is a little like the images you have seen of rattlesnakes curled up in dry leaves or sofa cushions. It takes a moment for our eye to pick the viper out as their outlines are broken up by the patterns they bear on their thick coils.

The unknown retouching artist has darkened a few passages in the sky to direct attention away from the beak area as well. More contrast and detail has been added to the tree at right to win your eye to another part of the picture. I have heard stories of a bird who will feign a broken wing and flap feebly across the ground as if injured, away from her nest, to distract and lure predators from her young. The detail added to the tree on the right does this, it weights the picture a little differently and pulls our interest over to the right.

The gap between the beak structure and the left hand margin of the picture has been increased also. The closer a beak is to the opposite rabbet of the canvas, the harder it is for the viewer to circumnavigate it. A good clear passageway over there will help.

The reflections in the water and the cheesy little sailboat on the right add vertical shapes to the area to overcome the thrusting knife like shape of the offending beak. The boat crosses and shortens the hard line at its base, deempathisizing its structure even more.

There are sometimes solutions to dealing with problem shapes in nature, often they have to do with deemphasizing them or breaking up their lines through camouflage.

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DUMB DESIGN IDEAS 4

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DUMB DESIGN IDEAS
ONE FOR EACH EYE

Here is another of our Dutch tyros efforts. As additional biographical information becomes available on this artist I am sure we shall learn that every aspect of his life was as misguided and poorly conceived as his art. And Oh! the poor helpmate who must have contended with his foolishness and pretended to have pride in an artist of so limited ability. How vexed she must have been when other artist's wives rode in elegant carriages and wore their truncated shifts of padded organza! The illusion of love must have been hard to maintain, but it is the ability of caring women to bear the burden of a useless man with only continual complaint as a rod for his correction.

Like every one of his works, this one contains a dreadful error. Mistakes in painting preexist their commission. They are out there just waiting to be made. Their legions are so great that I can only catalogue them in wonderment.

We have only to look at this picture to recognize its chief error, the painting has two trees each being of equal importance in the tableau. Such a fault destroys our viewers attention as his eye travels betwixt the two, confounded, unable to light upon one and know it for the subject. A painting having but a single tree of great import, and with its brothers subordinated to it, would be a finer thing than this mistaken daub.

Again, a greater effect made be had by the inclusion of but a single subject. Better then, to forswear a second tree and include but the one, for it is impossible to command all of nature on a single canvas, better to choose but a single prize from her unfettered bodice. Nor can I think other than that:

A PAINTING MUST HAVE BUT A SINGLE SUBJECT, IT MAY CONTAIN OTHER ELEMENTS BUT THEY MUST BE SUBORDINATED TO THE SUBJECT AND SUPPORT ITS ROLL.

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DUMB DESIGN IDEAS, THE BEAK

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DUMB DESIGN IDEAS
THE BEAK

A selection from the Nevelson Wing collection, featuring another of the landscapes of a forgotten painter from wherever Dutch people live. As all of his paintings seem to bear alarming faults I will choose one at random. Let's say you and I examine this one!

This painting contains the BEAK ERROR! The artist has recorded this lovely summer scene just as he saw it splayed before him. The distant headland or bend in the receding lake shore becomes a thrusting beak shape. How like a sharpened hot dog it appears!

Frantically the tyro artist installed big clouds and vertical trees on one side but he just couldn't counterbalance the thrusting jagged beak. The pitiful collection of his life's work, shows that not occasionally, but every single time he was on the water he painted those beaks! The swells who frequented the better galleries would never have dreamed of buying his work!

It's a shame no one was there to stop our artist friend so long ago, before he had painted dozens if not hundreds of paintings, with large, prominent beak structures amidships. You see, the shapes around a river or a small bay have that same appearance everywhere. They occur nearly every time you are on a body of water, they are ubiquitous. But they invite one to make a giant dagger shape right in the middle of your canvas. And while one or two beakish designs "might" enhance a show, too many would be unsettling, and none would be the ideal.

I have personally painted an enormous number of beaks, particularly in Acadia National Park. I have at once to believe I have control over beakyness and then suddenly I have made another. So whether at your compliance officers lakeshore cottage or tethered to the rocks of a tumultuous sea, do be careful of the beak.