artamaze by Katherine Hilden

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/31/world/europe/delayed-rescue-attempt-antarctica.html?hp

Hokusai and the Stranded Ship

Posted in Composition, Left-Right, Seeing, Technique and Demo, tagged Akademik Shokalskiy, Amdrew Peacock, Cape de la Motte, Great Wave of Kanagawa, Hokusay, Left-Right on December 31, 2013| Leave a Comment »

An arresting image. A ship in the Antarctic is trapped in ice. Some of the people on board will be rescued by helicopter and some will remain behind to take care of the ship. All this depends on the weather, which is severe.

The caption reads: “This image taken by Andrew Peacock, a passenger on the Akademik Shokalskiy, shows the ship stuck in the Antarctic ice on Monday near Cape de la Motte.”

The composition is uncanny. The photographer clambered around on solid ice until he found this ice formation curling over the view of the ship and, just coincidentally, a couple of people are standing there to look down at the ship. It’s too good to be true, but let’s assume it is true and these three elements—ship, people and ice formation—are not collaged together in Photoshop.

What makes this image so compelling? First, it’s optimistic. Second, it echoes the famous Hokusai woodcut. The two are related.

To test for optimism, just flip it horizontally. Same information, different mood. Where before, the ice formation was static, now the ice formation is on the left and it appears to be coming down on the ship. It’s ominous. Where before, the people on the left made us sympathize with them, now on the right, they are in a dark, gloomy mood.

The photographer may not have thought of Hokusai when he framed the shot, but surely he saw the association when he looked at his many frames from that day and picked this one. The ice curls and sits on

the page just like the Hokusai wave in his woodcut, “The Great Wave off Kanagawa,” 1823-29. Except flipped. In the Hokusai, the wave ominously towers and curls on the left. It moves towards the right and feels fast, powerful and threatening.

When we flip the Hokusai, putting the wave on the right, it looks static. It just stands there, is not going

anywhere, not threatening anybody. Looks funny.

http://www.katherinehilden.com

Abstract Painting, Flipped Left-Right

Posted in Color, Composition, Left-Right, tagged abstraction, Left-Right on March 14, 2013| Leave a Comment »

This does not work, does it!

It looks comical to me, like an attempt at an abstract painting based on oh-well-let’s-put-some-shapes-together. Isn’t that what abstraction is, just shapes that don’t represent anything? Soooo, wrooooong! If it were a matter of throwing some shapes together, then this thing would be good. Nice shapes, good colors. But so off, so mindless and heartless. The eye just does not want to move through this flipped version.

Now consider the original. What a relief! What an engaging composition!

(See previous post for clues to the genesis of the painting.)

Flip that Bottle

Posted in Composition, Left-Right, Seeing, Still life, Technique and Demo, tagged bottle, composition, feeling, Left-Right on December 24, 2012| Leave a Comment »

It’s predictable, isn’t it. You knew this was coming. When there’s a composition with a strong diagonal, the flip can’t be far behind. Here it is.

Same information. Different feeling.

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http://urbanlegends.about.com/b/2012/06/23/the-legend-of-the-apple-logo.htm and

Apple’s Apple: Left-Right

Posted in Composition, Left-Right, Seeing, tagged Apple, bite, calligraphy, leaf, Left-Right, Steve Jobs, visual accessibility on October 1, 2012| Leave a Comment »

You can explore urban myths about the origin and placement of Apple’s apple at

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/05/upside-down-apple-logo/

But the left-right flip is even more telling than the up-down issue, which was finally resolved.

I bet the flipped version of the apple was not even considered. Would you find this apple appetizing? Optimistic? Sympathetic? Appealing? Friendly? Future oriented? Steve Jobs, who was a student and avid practitioner of calligraphy and a fanatic about visual accessibility, would never have sketched this version. Would you?!

Yet, there it is, same information. Same factual, leafed, bitten apple.

Haydn and Yet Another Left-Right Flip

Posted in Composition, Left-Right, Seeing, Surreal, tagged flip, Four Seasons, Haydn, Left-Right, Millennium Park, postcard, symphony on August 13, 2012| Leave a Comment »

I’ve always been grateful to Haydn for inventing the symphony but have more often than not found his compositions a bit too tame. Until last week, that is, when I heard his Four Seasons performed under Carlos Kalmar’s direction at Millennium Park. At its 1801 premier in Vienna it was a success, but I can’t imagine that performance to have been as bold as the one we heard here in Chicago last week.

But back to visuals.

The woman at left was posing for a friend whose fumbling with a camera required multiple takes. This gave me time to pull out my pocket Sony. I immediately saw this composition and am showing the photo without later cropping or tweaking. My take on the scene will never make it as a having-a-good- time-wish-you-were-here postcard, will it. It’s funny, I hope that’s your reaction. It also has a warmth that the left-right flip lacks.

The flip is also funny, but in a weird way. Pessimistic, gloomy, just plain wrong. If this had been the scene in front of me—and that’s entirely possible—it’s unlikely that I would have “seen” it and taken the shot.

Left-Right: Flip that Leaf

Posted in abstraction, Composition, Illustration, Imagination, Left-Right, Seeing, Still life, tagged clunky, composition, dying on the page, information, Left-Right, negative space, ridiculous, seeing on August 4, 2012| Leave a Comment »

I don’t want to be predictable, but if you’ve been following these posts, you know that whenever I get to talking about dynamics, tension and counterpoint in an image, the Lift-Right flip cannot be far behind.

Look at this. I flipped Linné’s original drawing, horizontally. Isn’t this a funny image!

How can that be?! Same factual information. Yet in the original (see previous post) the lone leaf sticking out of the margin looks mysterious and important. Here in the flip, doesn’t it look ridiculous, clunky and contrived? The bare stems in the original were energetic and full of promise, but here in the flip, they go nowhere, they seem to die on the page. The peak in the horizon line is tired here, where in the original it feels up-beat.

I don’t theorize about this in class or give specific instructions. But we often play with cropping, i.e. placing strips of white paper over a finished drawing to see what happens. That’s an important seeing exercise because it focuses on “what makes an image.” These marvelous compositions in my students’ work come about because I encourage them to practice seeing how elements on the drawing page relate to one another and the edge and the negative space they create, rather than just what they depict.

Monet, “On the Bank of the Seine, Bennecourt”

Posted in Composition, Left-Right, Technique and Demo, tagged boat, downer, empathy, Left-Right, Monet, mood, Seine, tranquil, woman on November 30, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Claude Monet (1840-1926) painted “On the Bank of the Seine, Bennecourt” in 1868. He was only twenty-eight. It’s brilliant. The brush strokes are lively, the colors are tranquil. But is the feeling of the painting as a whole tranquil? I don’t think so. I think it’s gloomy. Why does this painting have a dark mood despite its bright colors? Why do we imagine this woman to be sad? The inclusion of the boat at that angle, lifts the mood a bit, but still, what a downer. Why would such a young man paint an image with so much tension in it?

He didn’t. What you see above is a horizontal flip of the real painting. What Monet painted is reproduced below here. This is what we see at the Art Institute. Isn’t this more tranquil? Aren’t we more inclined to empathize with this woman rather than the woman on the right? The boat, again, complicates the picture. Here it slants down, making us suspect that all is not well in this life. If he had painted the boat slanting up from left to right, the image would be unbearably cheerful, even corny. Try it.

What’s interesting and important to note is that the information conveyed in each version is the same. So, it’s not about information. If it’s not about information, what then? I can tell you this much: it’s about feeling and empathy. This is the third of left-right flips. If you follow these posts, it’ll dawn on you. This should be fun. (Go to Topics in the column at right and choose Left-Right)

Let’s go back to the boat again. Look what happens when we take out the boat altogether. Would you agree that the boat is not there because Monet wants to tell us that the woman rowed it to the bank of the river? The boat is not part of a narrative, but is needed to complicate the mood and lend depth to the image.

Click the thumbnails to enlarge and then play with the boat question.

Honored at Evanston Art Center and Bird on Beach

Posted in Achievement, Composition, Left-Right, tagged bird on beach, Donation, Evanston Art Center, honored, Left-Right on October 29, 2011| 3 Comments »

For the second time in a year a student has shown appreciation for my teaching by making a donation to the Evanston Art Center in my honor. Thank you, thank you!

I wanted an image for this post, of course, and found this one from about a month ago, taken at Gillson Beach, Wilmette, in late afternoon. I decided to turn it into a left-right exercise. Which one has a more optimistic feeling? The bird walking to the left or the bird walking to the right?

The Lake, Flipped

Posted in Composition, Left-Right, literalness, tagged lake, Left-Right, mood, stormy on September 13, 2011| Leave a Comment »

The lake has presented us with oceanic drama lately. A student in my landscape painting class said, it’s like being on Cape Cod.

My little palm sized Sony does its best, but fails at recording the dramatic impact, the roar, the wind, the chill, the sheer excitement. All I get is a composition. Lines and texture. I’ll take it.

Now look at these two versions. I just flipped the photo horizontally in Photoshop.

Same information: two people walking on the beach. But what a difference in mood! Can you see that one is emotional and gloomy; and the other tells an optimistic but shallow tale?

See also post August 14: George Innes, “Going Home.”