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Part One – THE PENCIL
uninteresting to the viewer. What we intend
to do with shape in these projects is to give
you basic experience in using hard pencils to
create shapes that, when drawn on a picture
surface in relation to each other, will create a
good composition.
Sometimes this movement across and
through the plane happens intuitively, but
more often than not it is confirmed when
you see an artist working and they step back
from the picture and gesture towards their
piece of work with arm outstretched, head
tilted sideways and hand or thumb looking
as though they are engaging with the picture
in some way. This is when the artist is trying
to contrive the composition.
Rhythm is very obvious in other forms of
art, such as music, dance and writing. It is a
sort of beat holding the work together. In a
drawing or painting we can create a sense of
rhythm that enables us to work
harmoniously from one point in the
composition to another. Rhythm can be
evident in the use of tone, colour, mark and
scale, but here we deal with it as it presents
itself in shape.
ORDER AND BALANCE
In any given picture there are a series of
tensions that must play off and counter each
other so what we finish up with is a pictorial
synthesis or a pictorial order. This is what is
meant by a composition having a semblance
of order and balance. If you look at most
classical works of art, particularly landscapes
by Poussin or Claude, you will see this quality
in abundance.
MOVEMENTThe importance of movement through the
picture plane cannot be over-emphasized.
Shape and other pictorial elements help us
to create movement. The artist can engage
the eye of the viewer so that it moves across
the picture plane, stop the eye at a certain
point and then move it back into space,
bring the eye forward again, and at the same
time across the picture space, and then take
the eye right out of the picture to the end of
its journey. Most viewers are unaware of this
visual encounter, which tends to occur
within a few seconds of looking at a picture.
There are, of course, many ways other
than the use of movement by which artists
can - either consciously or subconsciously -
enable us to read and understand their work.
As well as creating these ordered harmonies
and movements through and across the
picture plane, the opposite effect can be
created, especially if we want to achieve an
expressive effect.
As beginners we tend to draw objects in
isolation and in a void, so they look as
though they are floating in space. For an
object to have an identity, and speak to us as
viewers, it must have a context. The artist
does this by drawing the space around
objects rather than by trying to capture the
shapes of individual objects in isolation.