CHAPTER XII

HINTS ON ARRANGEMENT-SOLECISMS IN COMPOSITION

BEFORE we take painting from the model, let me have a little chat with you about the necessity of training your imaginative faculties and cultivating your sense of arrangement.

Although we are concerned mainly here with painting as a craft, a knowledge of painting alone will not suffice to equip you for the profession of painter, which you may wish to adopt. There is much more to learn if you would be, as you should, many-sided. The student too often assumes that the power to compose or arrange with effect will come at his bidding, for to him it appears to be so easily done by others.

We do not get stronger by watching other men lift weights. Nor are weights lifted or pictures composed, either at the beginning or at any time, without effort.

Good composition calls for a far higher mental capacity than mere painting, which in itself is difficult enough. And by neglecting to cultivate our imaginative faculties whilst we are young, we incur some danger of losing them altogether.

[100]When in the course of your reading you come across a pictorial episode, visualise it and sketch the scene as it strikes you. There are, nowadays, so many beautiful illustrations to be seen; you may well learn, from some of them, how figures are grouped, and how accessories are placed to complete the pictorial arrangement. Such mental notes, added to your unceasing practice, will greatly increase the facility with which you will be enabled to arrange and compose artistically.

When visiting a picture or sculpture gallery, take a sketch-book with you. Your memory will not suffice to recall the results of your analysis of compositions. Study particularly the placing of heads, half and full length portraits and figures, and the main structural lines and colour masses of decorative designs. Mark the arrangement of light and shade (chiaroscuro) in Dutch and Spanish pictures, which have such fine technical qualities, and when anything strikes you as particularly beautiful, draw it, and in drawing it search for the secret of its beauty.

Here are a few hints for your guidance in placing your own studies.

You have already been advised, when placing a head on a canvas about 24 inches by 20, to mark the chin about the centre of the canvas. When the head is facing you, it should be placed fairly centrally. When the face is looking either to the right or left, let there be a greater space in front than behind it; and keep your heads high up. [101]There is distinct loss of dignity when a figure seems to be slipping down behind its frame; nor does one expect to chase the subject of a picture round the edges of the canvas. That modern trick has ceased either to surprise or fascinate, and it smacks much of the unsteady Kodak.

All pictures should be decorative-that quality need not be exclusively reserved for what are known as decorative pictures-and there should be just accident enough in their arrangement for them not to appear obviously arranged.

SOLECISMS IN COMPOSITION

The "Artistic inequalities" is an expression to remember. I will endeavour to explain it with a set of negative rules. No two quantities-where it is possible to avoid such repetitions, should be equal in value, either of groups, colour-masses, or spacing.

Figures or groups should not be the same width across as the spaces between them and the edges of the frame ; nor should the horizon be centrally placed nor a figure, or any part of its outline, just touch another outline. It should either cut the other boldly through, or sensibly avoid it.

Figures should not be "haloed" by repeating forms above them either by cloud shapes, trees, hills, or other incidents or markings. Nor should they be placed back to back ; nor be grouped in equal numbers.

[102] The confusion which results from ignoring these simple rules is made evident in the accompanying diagram.

In architectural decoration, symmetry is not necessarily objectionable. The element of accident is rarely called for in formal designs.

In Fig. 19 we have the perpendicular lines of the columns running into the outline of the head and so enclosing it, carried on again by the drapery folds and the straight leg. We also see horizontals found in a line with the eyes, mouth, chin, and so on-limbs cut through at the joint- the bent leg, conducting the eye into the angle of the canvas-a curved marking in the columns, recalling the top line of the head-cloud forms echoing the head itself-the arm and leg making [103] between them something in the nature of a parallelogram. Any one of these faults might well tend to confuse or check the sense of detachment and simplicity.

Many concavities should be avoided, as well as "double action," such as the two hands of a figure separately occupied, unless the subject demands it.

Such difficulties as these will crop up re-peatedly in the making of compositions, and where it becomes impossible to steer clear of them, a judicious use of light and shade may often help to render them harmless. But should your composition, or any part of it, appear weak, apply such negative laws to it. They may assist you in discovering the source of weakness.

I would draw your attention to two compositions of Michelangelo which form part of the ceiling decoration of the Sistine Chapel, that should make manifest to you the capacity of line and massing in the hands of a great master.

[104]In the "Creation of Adam," mark the sense of dawning life in the figure of Adam. The sweep forward of the Creator, supported by figures that foreshadow the creation of Eve and her children, and the great curves of the folds that enclose this on-moving group-how satisfying is the fulness of those convex forms !

In the "Raising of the Brazen Serpent" pen-dentive, the bodies and limbs fitted and dovetailed in the foreground group suggest, besides a writhing mass, a consummate orchestration of lines which has never been equalled or approached.

XXVI. THE CREATION OF ADAM. BY MICHAEL ANGELO

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