Workshop Review
Thank you for producing the wonderful DVDs on Symphonic Composition and Portrait Drawing. You have provided a great wealth of information in both DVDs.
Having a technical background in electrical engineering, I have to admit that I was particularly lured by the information in your first DVD on symphonic composition. In my opinion, though it might be technically biased, it is your DVD on symphonic composition wherein you provide the true "Masters Key". I like to think that I have done extensive reading on art instruction in an attempt to self-educate myself, and I have to say, that you have provided a comprehensive treatise on composition and design that is difficult or nearly impossible to find elsewhere today. In fact, I have to confess that I was quite perturbed by how little I knew about the significance of Phi with a master's degree in engineering. It took your course on Symphonic composition to propel me to explore " Sacred Geometry" ! I was consumed with the subject last winter when I suddenly realized that I was quickly drifting back into technical doldrums of mathematics far removed from my art. I really have yet to come across a book that provides as comprehensive a course on design. In this DVD, you clearly elucidate the placement of the center of interest in relation to the entire composition which of course is crucial. I found this course extremely stimulating.
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Workshop Review
Symphonic Composition will probably and hopefully be part of one of the most significant art re-discoveries of this century. There are so many of us artists throughout the USA and world that struggle with composition (I'm assuming from my experience and reading and association with other artists), applying this or that scheme, more or less shooting in the dark. And, here is a way to rationally get a grip on one’s compositional efforts, better know what one is doing, and also, importantly, incorporate power into one’s art.
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POWER UP YOUR PAINTING!
Symphonic Composition: the Elements of Harmonious Pictorial Division & Applied Color Theory Instant Download Workshop COMBO is ON SALE FOR ONLY $14.97!!
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One would be hard put to deny that there is an underlying power to great paintings. The question is: what is that power? Is it solely the spirit of the artist coupled with a mastery of drawing and color? There are many well-drawn and painted works of art. Yet very few of them would be considered great paintings.
If a hierarchy is applied to the visual craft of painting, I believe that both drawing and color would be second to composition. They are all critically important, but it is composition that binds and moves the viewer's eye throughout a painting in a rhythmic cadence.
Rhythm is the primary conduit to the viewer's viscera. It is what moves and carries the emotional qualities. The active force of music is rhythm. It is the same with painting.
The works of Jackson Pollock are primarily rhythm. So, too, with painters as diverse as JMW Turner and Morandi. Pictured above is a delightful still-life by the Italian painter Morandi. This painting is simply titled Still Life, 1960. The crockery is crudely drawn and painted. The color scheme is a complementary set (red/green) and grey; a very basic harmony. Yet there is an hypnotic power so this work.
Morandi invested much of his career's study to composition. He also taught composition for many years at the Italian state art school near his home in Bologna. Albeit for a pittance.
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Snowstorm, 1842
JMW Turner, British |
The compositional scheme for this small work is an annotated square root 2 rectangle. For the uninitiated the geometry can seem daunting. But it isn't. This scheme is one of the most popular. Once you learn the basic 'keys' of Symphonic Composition, you will recognize it in many great works of art and apply it to your own work.
One of Britain's greatest painters, Turner, also used the annotated square root 2 composition more than a century earlier. But in a more complex manner.
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The Symphonic Composition DVD Workshop was filmed live at the Vancouver Academy of Art in May 2003. Not only will you see Michael Britton presenting the keys to composition step-by-step, but unlike the workshop enviroment, Mr. Britton has enhanced the lesson plans with numerous special chapters that are available only on the DVD's. This DVD Workshop set is for all levels of painters. It incorporates a layered, step-by-step approach to learning and assumes that you have very little, if any, knowledge of geometry.
For those of you with a mathematical bent, the simple 'keys' taught here readily lend themselves to complex and elegant solutions to painting.
Even a 'simple' portrait drawing can be pushed to the next level by symphonically framing the pictorial surface (the canvas).
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Looking at Titian | A Composition Lesson
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Pictured here is an exquisite drawing, Portrait of a Young Woman, c. 1515, by Titian. This simple work is a dynamically composed truncated Root 3 rectangle.
The first four lines of any composition are the framing edges of your canvas or paper – that is your pictorial surface. Everything else must correspond harmoniously to your pictorial surface, which is generally referred to as the canvas. There are elements in Titian drawing that succinctly correspond to his canvas and will readily become apparent as I deconstruct the work.
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I begin my analysis by first applying a square and constructing a Root 2 rectangle top-down to Titian’s drawing.
The square’s diagonal ‘AB’ is also the radius for the arc that determines the base of the 2 rectangle.
Note how Titian’s stroke describing a fold of drapery corresponds to the arc. Of course Titian did not drag out his jumbo size geometry set and inscribe the diagonals and arcs. He instinctively felt them. This instinct was honed by study and practice. By similar token, I immediately recognized this work as being dynamically composed.
It doesn’t take long before you acquire this instinct too. Understanding the tools of Symphonic Composition opens up new horizons of thinking and painting.
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From the Root 2 rectangle a Root 3 rectangle is constructed by applying a diagonal ‘AB’ from the top of the square to the opposite corner of the Root 2 rectangle and, again, utilizing it to draw an arc.
This diagonal is where Titian has deliberately placed the head of the young woman.
By using these very basic tools of Symphonic Composition Titian has elevated this drawing to exquisite heights. Also bear in mind that I am distilling this deconstruction to its simplest mode. There is a lot more going on in this piece.
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The concluding coup de grâce is the diagonal from the base of the Root 3 rectangle to the base of the initial square. The intersection point ‘C’, laying upon the Root 3’s arc and this new diagonal, succinctly determines the fourth edge of the canvas. Thus the painter’s secret geometry is exposed!
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