Stapleton Kearns on Composition

Master landscape painter, Stapleton Kearns, has started a list of poor compositional choices he has titled "The Encyclopedia of Dumb Design Ideas." They chronical the misadventures of a fictional artist, Dirk Van Assaerts, and his many flawed sketches in oil. These flaws offer beginners a list of things to watch out for, focusing primarily on the aesthetics, or lack thereof, of certain shapes, and how they draw or shift our attention. You can surmise from this list, many years of frustration and even agony as an art teacher.

Tangents: http://stapletonkearns.blogspot.com/2011/05/encyclopedia-of-dumb-design-ideas.html
Road to Nowhere: http://stapletonkearns.blogspot.com/2011/04/stupid-design-ideas-2.html
One for Each Eye: http://stapletonkearns.blogspot.com/2011/05/encyclopedia-of-dumb-design-ideas-4.html
Foreground Dillema: http://stapletonkearns.blogspot.com/2011/05/foreground-dilemma.html
The Three Striper: http://stapletonkearns.blogspot.com/2011/05/encyclopedia-of-dumb-design-ideas-three.html
The Potato 1: http://stapletonkearns.blogspot.com/2011/05/encyclopedia-of-dumb-design-ideas_11.html
The Potato 2: http://stapletonkearns.blogspot.com/2011/05/encyclopedia-of-dumb-design-ideas-rock.html
Beaks 1: http://stapletonkearns.blogspot.com/2011/05/encyclopedia-of-dumb-design-ideas-beak.html
Beaks 2: http://stapletonkearns.blogspot.com/2011/05/debeakification.html
Beaks 3: http://stapletonkearns.blogspot.com/2011/05/kensett-beak.html
Beaks 4: http://stapletonkearns.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-beaks-and-some-beaks-avoided.html

Expect updates, as Stapleton Kearns adds to his blog.

Composing Death

Death's always a drab topic. It's not something you'd bring up just for fun with friends. In our daily lives, it revolves around funerals, and the friends and relatives who mourn their losses. You wish you could help them, but the grief isolates them. You don't know what to say, and probably there are no words to help. You wish the whole thing never happened, and you try to distract yourself.

The following two pieces remind us that death comes for us as well. It is something to fear, not simply ignore. The first is a cover piece by Charlie Adlard for a comic called The Walking Dead, one of the grimmest zombie stories you can find. It also won the Eisner Award just last year, for best continuing series.

The cover consists of a group of zombies at the top stumbling towards you, with you apparently lying on the ground, having tripped over debris. In the middle of the zombies there's a mother and child, suprisingly unhurt, and seemingly ignored by the hungry zombies - a mystery I'll get to in a moment. Below the zombies is just darkness, taking up most of the image.

So what does the dark represent? For me, this cover states a clear message. First you're going to be torn apart by these dead things, and then you'll go wherever the darkness leads - the depth of the black referencing the six feet of burial, although you'd be lucky to be buried in this circumstance. Charlie Adlard could've easily just drawn their legs and feet, in a field or street filled with debris, filling in a lovely background. He could've placed the zombies in the middle, or down below, adding a lovely bit of sky above - even stars twinkling in twilight. But it wouldn't have told the same story.

Despite the drunken stupor of these zombies, there's a definite longing in their eyes, a need to bring you down to their level - that mixed with a stupid hunger we've come to expect from zombies. In this image, death isn't just a fact of life or a force of nature, it's a hungry beast, and utterly ruthless. Charlie wants you to fear death, to fill you with dread and suspense, hinting at the horrors to come within the comic. And with a simple bit of perspective, placing the zombies above you, you become a participant in the story, not just a voyeur.

Here's a portrait of Chris Cooper by Daniel Clarke that says all the same things, without the zombies:


It's a bit more subtle, but it's amazing how just one man's expression can say so much. This portrait uses the same black compositional device, but the focus is a little different. While the first portrays death as an unthinking animal, this one embodies it in the cold intellect of a man, who ought to know better. Chris Cooper, as a villain in one of his films, displays a face that states both indifference and relentless drive. We fear him, but there's a second, underlying fear - that we are the monster as well. Zombies are no longer human, so they're not subject to notions of ethics or justice - they're free to kill and maim with a clear conscious. People don't get that luxury, and of the two dangers represented in these works, it's man we most have to fear.

I'm going to focus my next few posts on portraits, to explore the different functions they fill. It amazes me how some portraits are just heads on walls, while others can tell a complete story. I'll try to find more examples.

Giancola - a final examination

I just wanted to take one final look at this painting and see if there was anything used from the first post on this blog - any of the typical devices, such as the golden mean, rule of thirds, zigzags or L's, etc.

Here's a look at this using the Golden Mean to find four points, which I then used to make a grid, dividing up the picture plane. The idea with this is that the points of intersection should be ideal focal points, and the shapes should follow the lines. I don't see any of that here.

Here's another grid, this time dividing the painting into fourths. Again, I don't see any of the points or lines lining up with anything.

This last one turned out interesting, though. Here I made a simple diamond shape, and you'll see that a lot of the composition fits in quite nicely. There is a lot of symmetry in this painting, it's just subtle.