Paul Klee said, 'To paint well is simply this: to put the right colour in the right place.'
That's something I've never found easy. To me, composition has always been a hit-and-miss affair. If a painting niggles me and I can't seem to get the colours or the brushstrokes right, it's usually because I haven't paid enough attention to the composition. This summer, I turned to Cezanne. I was curious about why these slightly strange, cropped and distorted paintings work. Look at the picture, bottom left. What's happening with that knife? And then that mark to the right of the tin doesn't seem to go anywhere. And the bottle in the painting, bottom right, is smack-bang in the centre, isn't it? Time and again, Cezanne puts something in the middle of his painting (the apple's core, the stem of the goblet) which acts as the pivot around which the picture revolves. He avoids symmetry by placing stronger, more eye-catching elements to one side, like the red apple to the left of the goblet, or the red tin, or the metal pan.
In Italy, I try it myself. The copper pot is way too big and the apple way too small, but by cropping the pot and placing the persimmons on the diagonal, it seems to work.
Back home, I rummage through the kitchen drawers at the village hall where I teach and find this magnificent kettle. The spout makes my picture too complicated, so I turn it around until it can't be seen. That night, just by drawing two diagonals on their paper before they begin, everyone in the class gets a decent result. And they finish their pictures in fewer strokes than usual, too.
No comments:
Post a Comment