definiteness of some marked object or effect. What is good as a “view” is apt to be the
reverse of suitable for a picture. You want something tangible, and you do not want too
much or too little of it. A long line of hill with a broad field beneath it, for instance, is
simple enough, but what is there for you to take hold of? In an ordinary light it is only a
few broad planes of value and color without an accent object to emphasize or centre on.
It can be painted, of course, and can be made a beautiful picture, but it is a subject for a
master, not for a student. But suppose there were a tree or a group of trees in the field;
suppose a mass of cloud obscured the sky, and a ray of sunlight fell on and around the
tree through a rift in the clouds. Or suppose the opposite of this. Suppose all was in
broad light, and the tree was strongly lighted on one side, on the other shadowed, and
that it threw a mass of shadow below and to one side of it. Immediately there is
something which you can take hold of and make your picture around. The field and hill
alone will make a study of distance and middle distance and foreground, but it would not
make an effective sketch. The two effects at once, and what suggests a sketch suggests a
picture.
The central object or effect which I have supposed also clears up the matter of the
placing of your subject on the canvas. With merely the hill and plain you might cut it off
anywhere, a mile or two one side or the other would make little or no difference to your
picture. But the tree and the effect of light decide the thing for you. The tree and the
lighting are the central idea of the picture. Very well, then, make them large enough on
your canvas to be of that importance. Then what is around them is only so much more as
the canvas will hold, and you will place the tree where, having the proper proportionate
size, it will also “compose well” and make the canvas balance, being neither in the
middle exactly nor too much to one side.
Here are two photographs taken in the same field and of the same view, with the
camera pointed in the same direction in both. One shows the lack of saliency, although
the tree I there. In the other the camera was simply carried forward a hundred yards or
so, until the tree became large enough to be of importance in the composition. The
placing is simply a better position with reference to the tree in this case.
Centralize. - Now, as you go about looking for things to sketch, look always for some
central object or effect. If you find that what seems very beautiful will not give you
anything definite and graspable, - some contrast of form, or light and shade, or color, —
don’t attempt it. The thing is beautiful, and has doubtless a picture in it, but not for you.
You are learning how to look for and to find a subject, and you must begin with what is
readily sketch, without too much subtlety either of form or color of the value.
Placing. - Having found your subject with something definite in, you must place on
your canvas so that it tells. It will not do to put in haphazard, letting any part of it come
anywhere is it happens. You not be satisfied with the effect of this. The object of a picture
is to make visible something which you wish to call attention to; to show something that
seems to you worth looking at. Then you must arrange it so that the particular
something is sure to be seen whether anything else is seen are not. This is the first thing
to be thought of in placing your subject. Where is it to come on the canvas? How much
room is it to take up? If it is too large, there is not enough surrounding it to make an
interesting whole? If it is not to be emphasized, it must have something to be
emphasized with reference to.
wang
(Wang)
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