41 The importance of shapes
Paul Talbot-Greaves urges you to consider the variety and arrangement of shapes in your stilllife setup to help you create better compositions, and suggests an exercise for you to try
Paul Talbot-Greaves urges you to consider the variety and arrangement of shapes in your still-life setup to help you create better compositions, and suggests an exercise for you to try
Shapes form the basis of our paintings. They are the foundation of composition and design, yet they are an invisible element of a picture because our focus is always placed on the content of the subject, rather than the underlying structure and overall placement of shapes. If you have never considered the arrangement of shapes before, take a look at your last few paintings – try to imagine the content as a series of simple or geometrical shapes. For example, a building might become a rectangle, there may be large triangular fields or an oval-shaped tree. Do you have a variety of shape sizes? Are any of them interconnected or overlapping? It’s not just how the shapes are arranged that makes a painting interesting, but the variety of shape sizes and how they might be visually balanced in the painting.
Arranging shapes
At the start of this series (May 2021 issue), I wrote about composition and the use of the compositional grid to aid design. Hopefully this helped you to think more about arranging subjects and where to place your focus. At the very beginning of your compositional design, try to see things as basic shapes, not detail, and get those arranged in some sort of harmonious grouping. In a landscape setting this might involve you moving around your subject, trying out different viewpoints and getting to a place where a few shapes perhaps interconnect and overlap to create links through the painting. Sometimes you can dramatically change how the shapes interact just by crouching down. If there is a building involved, make it face into the picture space rather than out of it if possible. In a still-life setting you have a little more creative freedom to work from different angles and viewpoints, and to arrange the setup and the lighting.
I always find daylight best as it is strong and intense, and you get some great shadows and reflected colours.
But if you intend to work on a piece from life over a period of time, it may be better to set up a lighting box so that you have consistent light each time you revisit the subject. There are lots of ideas for creating light boxes on the internet but basically you need to construct a mini theatre with a light source from one side. Usually, the light box is enclosed or draped with cloth to prevent secondary lighting from affecting your subject. An alternative is to use photography to record your subject then work from the photo. In this case, set up your arrangement in a darkened room with a spotlight to illuminate the subject. Take lots of photos from different angles with different light angles to find an interesting composition. Working from photographs is very convenient for many reasons but do be aware that they
will blacken shadows and sometimes they can distort the subject through the parallax of the lens.
When you arrange your subject, think about creating a variety of shape sizes and incorporate at least one large shape, one or more medium-sized shape and a smaller, or multiple small shapes. The contrast of small against or in front of large will put the attention on the smaller shape. In my demonstration (above) I had four oranges of the same size, so I grouped three together in a colander to create a large shape of similar values and colour, then used one orange as a smaller, satellite shape in front of the arrangement. I set this up outside on a sunny day and took numerous photos from different angles, overhead, side-on and so on, each time moving the arrangement to create the best grouping of shapes and links with the cast shadow. The cast shadow creates a medium shape that links the features together. Notice how I placed the single orange just out of the picture space and the same with the larger group at the top. This connects the frame of the picture with the subject and carries the design right through the picture space from bottom right to top left, which makes the arrangement interesting.
Connecting shapes and values
If your arrangement has too many disjointed shapes, your eye will dash between them and the painting may appear too busy, which is why I try to link features together by overlapping them or connecting them with shadows. Using similar values and colours of objects adjacent to one another is another good way to connect several smaller shapes into one bigger shape – as I did with the oranges in my demonstration. Half-closing your eyes to look at your subject helps you to simplify detail and see the relevant values that visually blend. You can physically blend shapes of similar value together to create lost-and-found edges, which adds further interest to a painting.
DEMONSTRATION Oranges in the Sun STAGE ONE
Having photographed the setup I worked the composition from an iPad so that I had luminous shadows to work with in the studio, as printed photographs often blacken them. I drew the shapes loosely using a small sable/synthetic bright brush with some diluted cerulean blue acrylic. The paint dried almost immediately, so I was able to continue with a watery wash of the same blue over the whole piece. This was simply to knock out the white and to provide a complementary base colour on which to work
STAGE TWO
Working quickly with a size 16 sable blend bright, I added some base colours diluted with flow improver to prevent the colour separating and to help it adhere. The colour was about the consistency of single cream and the moisture content kept it damp to allow for blending. I wasn’t overly concerned about making a perfect picture at this stage, it was purely to establish some colour. I used cadmium red and cadmium yellow medium for the oranges with cobalt blue and cadmium red for the darker parts of the painting
STAGE THREE
The colours did not take long to dry, so after a few minutes I continued to increase the values and saturation of the painting. Working with sizes 12 and 10 short brights, I blocked in more darks using French ultramarine and burnt sienna, then working with slightly thicker colour mixed with a little matt medium I built up the brighter colours of the oranges. I used matt medium to add a little transparency and to allow for thicker paint mixes
FINISHED PAINTING
Oranges in the Sun, acrylic on Bockingford 200lb (425gsm) Not, 838in (20320cm). I continued refining the painting, adding thin layers of cerulean blue into the shadows of the oranges and creating bold expressive marks with the brush. In parts I used neat cadmium red to increase the brightness of the light. I alternated the process of painting the rim of the colander with the background colour, cutting in and out of the shape and losing edges here and there. I worked the painting gradually towards the light, finishing with titanium white painted thickly to bring in the highlights