THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DUMB DESIGN IDEAS Potato edition

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DUMB DESIGN IDEAS
POTATOES

Another find from the Nevelson master this painting is a fine example of a design flaw. Painted on the lid of a White Owl box, ( the artists white is suspected to be the ground up plastic mouthpieces from those same smokes ) this small painting contains a design problem called potation. What is that, you might well ask?

POTATION, THE REPETITION OF THE SAME SHAPE AND DIMENSION INSTEAD OF VARIED AND INTERESTING SHAPES, GIVES AN AMATEURISH AND ANNOYING ARTIFICIALITY.

If you again look at the painting above, or in your pamphlets, you will notice that the trees and the clouds are all of the same potato shape. Everyone who begins to paint makes this mistake. The ability to make interesting and varied shapes is developed and not instinctive. Like everything else in painting it must be learned, no one gets much for free.

When you see granny's paintings sold by her disgusted heirs at a yard sale, this is one of the most common faults. E-bay is full of modestly priced paintings by retired executives that are full of potato shapes. Someone once remarked that all amateur painting looks the same, and much of it does, because they all contain the same things unlearned.

So don't POTATE! as you paint, and when you study your work, police your shapes. Look for repletion of the same elements and intervals between them. The more different your shapes are from one another the longer you will hold the viewer.

Scholars researching the Nevelson master may have discovered his identity, one Dirk Van Assaerts from East Delft. Letters and civil records have come to light showing that he was a successful teacher and arts administrator too, winning numerous grants and subsidies. Van Assaerts left volumes of correspondence, opening to scholars a unique view into the life of a 17th century tyro. In coming posts I will reveal what contemporary scholarship has to say about this remarkable man.

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DUMB DESIGN IDEAS THE BIG "L"

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DUMB DESIGN IDEAS
THE BIG "L"

Here is another rediscovered painting by the "Nevelson master" Dirk Van Assaerts. This particularly dull painting contains the big "L". Dirk set his easel up in front of a grand tree, and made only one design decision, that was " I better not put it right in the middle!" So he placed his subject matter slightly off center. In this case on the right, and then he forgot about design altogether, believing wrongly that "he had taken care of that".

Now, this design is not so much "wrong" as it is pedestrian. It is common and unremarkable. The peoples windmill on the right helps to give balance, but does nothing to overcome the "square" and rather static arrangement. The painting is about avoidance of the mistake of placing the subject in the center of the canvas, but no attempt has been made to make a pleasing array of shapes for the viewer.


Dirk excitedly opened the waxen seal on the letter from the Accreditation Commission For Conformity Assessment Bodies. The tiny crabbed printing in brown ox gall ink informed him that he was the recipient of the National Assembly of Compulsion grant for the arts in the amount of 12,000 Guilders. Dirk thought "I could live on that for months! Running into the squalid low ceilinged bedchamber he rolled his dozing pink wife over and told her the news. She seemed to understand and her bristled lips twitched with slow comprehension.

"And there is a show!" Dirk exclaimed at the suet filled kiddie pool that had once his trim bride. I get a one man show at the Great hall of Conformity at the University of East Delft! Dirk pulled on his splintered wooden shoes, ran out the door and skipped down the litter strewn canal towpath heading for The Tavern of Remorse and Indiscretion, waving the letter over his head. His wife, Sepsis, went back to sleep in her new position.

Post # 900 The Square Deal

The Wooden Dumpster

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DUMB DESIGN IDEAS

Above is yet another of the trove of recently discovered paintings by noted 17th century tyro Dirk Van Assaerts. I had enormous difficulty photographing this piece. When I figure out how to get a better image I will show you that. I keep getting moire patterns and surface glare. It must be because it is so dark.

This painting has a problem, as usual. Everything in it is square, parallel to the edge of the canvas. It is wicked rigid and static. It is SQUARE. That's not hip.There are few designs less imaginative and more boring. But, we see a lot of industrial or edgy subjects painted that way. Art students are very fond of these designs, they are confrontational I guess. They stand directly in front of their subject and there it is, devoid of content or arrangement. Again, one or two of these in a larger show might be OK, but none would be preferable.

Below is further biographical information on the artist.

Dirk arranged an appointment with the Access to Creativity officer for his district. When he arrived, the officer was friendly and welcoming. He was an artist too! Dirk made a point of hiply saying "like" in every single sentence. The officer then said, "Sure, there's probably a grant for you, say, do you like working with three year olds? WE have a lot of that one right now". He explained that the things in Dirks portfolio were very nice, but that the local cell of the Accreditation Commission For Conformity Assessment Bodies who would actually be making the decision, liked to see edgier, more contemporary work. Realism was OK, now, anyway.... but it needed to be relevant to today, cutting edge and nonsentimental. Gritty realism is best. You know? Like all that other stuff out there.

Dirk knew just what to do . He took his easel made of sturdy deal, out behind the knackers shop. There he painted the old wooden dumpster. He saw his childrens faces looking up at him and his wife in her sofa, and he went hard to work. He set up his easel directly in front of the dumpster, placing it a little off center in his composition so it wouldn't be right in the middle of his canvas. He drew carefully being sure to include both the top and bottom of the dumpster and leave some air around it too. He used a viewfinder and he made a point of getting it all just like nature.

He finished the picture as carefully as he could and put it into a silver engine turned frame. There was a lot of paper work for the grant, but he carefully filled it all out correctly. Then he dropped the painting off at the submission entrance to the Conformity Bodies building, being careful to staple his paperwork in its isinglass envelope securely to its back.

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DUMB DESIGN IDEAS, subchapter X

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DUMB DESIGN IDEAS

ACCIDENTAL CONTENT
Shown above is another of the recently discovered "lost" paintings of Jan Van Assaerts. This daub contains a dreadful error. Sometimes an artist accidentally paints something that looks like a little face or a fish perhaps, and when you see it, the picture is ruined for you. You can never look at the painting without seeing that accidental "thing" in there. Artists take a lot of care to avoid those little gremlins.

Van Assaert accidentally included a half naked Hula Dancer. His wife was, by this time, a large pink gelatin, weighing as much as a tiled parlor stove, and he may have seen a Hula dancer from the far off Dutch colonies in the Polynesian islands or an engraving of the dance in a contemporary men's magazine. He certainly expressed his own subconscious yearnings in a way that seems as fresh today as when it was painted so long ago.

So don't let this happen to you! Before a painting goes to a show, or gallery, sit down in front of it and look carefully to make sure there are no little faces, pixies or frogs legs in there.

Dirk and his wife moved from the one room hovel on the canal to a larger home in the village. With his rapidly growing family Dirk knew he would have to find more income. Studying on the weekends, Dirk worked hard and in less than two years earned his masters degree.

Dirk still needed more money for his family, so he approached an artists career counselor. She was a little scary, frankly, she was mostly just bones and a few strands of oily ligament, her grey hair was pulled severely back on what must have been her head. Dressed in a shapeless, slubby raw linen bag the color of mildewed oatmeal, with broomstick pleats and a shirred round neck, she was feeding on a small salad. She had on wooden earrings the size and shape of Doritos. Like an enormous lizard she hissed through her thin lips and triple chins that artists make a living by getting grants. Then she looked disdainfully at him over the top of her rusting iron glasses as she ate another handful of organic vitamins for her numerous allergies. She waved him impatiently out of her damp office.

Dirk needed to apply for a grant from the Assembly of Compliance or one of the numerous Peoples Art Assistance bureaus. Training generations of children to be artists meant that upwards of 60% of the adult population were now artists. In order for that to work, a society had to provide lots of grant money and other stipends. Dirk knew that with Access to Creativity legislation recently signed into law, he stood a good chance of becoming an approved artist, particularly with that new degree! Unseen workers somewhere stood ready to pay, he had a right to make it as an artist!

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DUMB DESIGN IDEAS, ANOTHER DOWNTRIP

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DUMB DESIGN IDEAS
ANOTHER DOWNTRIP

Another find from the Nevelson master, this painting above hopefully illustrates the downtrip. If you compare the two similar pictures you will see that the arrows signify the direction that the lines and forms carry the viewer. In the painting below, the upbeat, the lines and forms rise up from the lower left and churn up towards the upper right. In the painting at the top of the pamphlet the lines and forms carry the viewer down hill. The paintings are directional. Some of you were having a hard time figuring this one out, I hope the new artwork helps.

A few quick biographical notes on the life of Dirk Van Assaerts;

As an arts administrator Dirk was spending an awful lot of time shuffling paper and he really wanted to further his art career, so he began working on his masters degree in fine arts. The day care ministry paid his tuition, and promised him a raise when he secured the terminal degree in his field. Uncertainty nagged poor Dirk, he already had one degree and that didn't help him become a full time artist, why get a second? However many people did, and it was the usual way of doing things. Besides he could always teach and with that masters degree, he could maybe secure a job at the Peoples Conformity District art school.

At his home, children were being born and beginning to knock things over. His wife gave birth to twin sons. In those days fathers didn't join their wives as they struggled and complained giving birth. Fathers paced back and forth in the waiting room, smoking cigarettes and reading Argosy magazine. As he paced, Dirk wondered how everything had gotten so complicated and expensive, he was going to have to find a way to increase his income. With four children now, the little house by the fetid canal was starting to get mighty cramped, and his carriage hardly fit them all, particularly since his wife had now more than doubled in size. She also bought a small dog like the rich Hollywood starlets prefer, that snarled and bit Dirk whenever he got too close to her

So on weekends (instead of painting, incidentally) he and his humongous wife hunted for a larger house, with four bedrooms and in a neighborhood with better schools. The schools were all exactly the same, the state consistency monitors decreed that. But some of the suburbs where the swells lived did seem to get better average test scores and place more students into the prestigious bureaucracies. People insisted they weren't actually better, but they were nicer.

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DUMB DESIGN IDEAS, UPBEAT

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DUMB DESIGN IDEAS

UPBEAT

Here is a question I got in the comments today;
"I'm a little confused Stape. You say the painting goes down (which I can see), but then you say that you want your paintings to go up - which the painting does actually do - it goes up to the right. If it is going down to the left, it is going up to the right. Isn't that what you said you want your paintings to do?"

Look at the example above also from the Nevelson master and the example from yesterday below. The lines and forms in the painting above, carry your eye up and to the right. The lines and the forms in the example below carry your eye down and to the left.

Part of the expression of sentiment in a landscape design is conveyed by the direction of the lines and forms. A painting can be designed or arranged in such a way as to be either full of spring, or sagging lines. Sagging lines are somber or even tragic. Springy lyrical lines are UPBEAT. Lines can be rhythmical or quiet, jagged or calm. The quality of the lines is decided by the artist.

There is another option, not to decide. Generally a photograph has whatever kind of lines were in front of it, some having one nature and the others, another. When I copy a photograph or studiously imitate nature with the greatest care, I often get a result which is arrhythmic. The lines aren't designed particularly, they just describe the objects in the view. In order to have my lines convey a mood, I must make them do so. I will be unable to observe this ordered scheme into a painting, this must be installed. This is bending the appearance of nature to suit your design ends. Gee, I hope that clarified it for you.


Here are a few more biographical notes on the rediscovery tyro painter Dirk Van Assaerts;

With a ravenous wife and big debts for education, mortgage and carriage, Dirk was motivated to work very hard at his master painter job in the conformity district daycare center. Being young and relatively quick compared to the other tongue swallowers at the center, Dirk naturally excelled in his work. He was promoted after several years and became an administrative director, overseeing a cadre of young art school graduates teaching three year olds how to paint. Because the daycare ministry was growing and had an important mission, they lobbied for and got "right to creativity knows no age barrier legislation". The District General stated in a well received speech before the Assembly of Compulsion "if we train all of our children to be artists in only a generation all adults will be artists too!". Dozens of able administrators were needed to run the massive program.

With a little more income from his promotion the little family flourished. Dirk named his second daughter, Flexibility, after one of the seven virtues. All of this working and reproducing didn't stop Dirk from painting, oh, no! Every weekend and occasionally after work (when he had the strength left) he would paint on location in the Dutch country side. But some weekends he had to work on the house, and worse than that, some weekends his wife insisted that "as a family it was important to go to the lake or visit her parents in Elitesberg". Her family had provided lots of potatoes for Dirks young family and they deserved to see their grand children at least every other weekend didn't they? Dirk found the time he formerly had to paint was rapidly being wasted on his family.

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DUMB DESIGN IDEAS, THE DOWN TRIP

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DUMB DESIGN IDEAS

THE DOWN TRIP

Here is another painting by the Nevelson master, Dirk Van Assaerts. Painted shortly after the artists marriage. The painting as usual has a problem, called THE DOWN TRIP! The lines of the painting have a sinking leftward depressing slant that causes the viewer to slump and rethink whether their lives are really that good. The painting is a drag at best and tragic when you are having a bad day.

It is OK to have one or maybe two of these in a grouping of paintings for a show or presentation (although having none would be my first choice) but too many gives a bummed out look. People feel things when they look at paintings, at least I want them to. I don't want to afflict the purchaser of my art (who will have to live with the picture) with a bad trip. Oh, no siree.

I'd like to be more positive, more UPLIFTING! I want to use rising lines that lift up the viewers gaze to the upper right of the painting in an ascending and affirming glide. Most of the time, paintings with lines that rise to the upper right are more pleasing, and cheerier. There are however, lots of paintings out there that are WAY too happy. They have spots of sunlight, and playing children, bright flowers and spotty backlit clouds and maybe a happy puppy playing with a satin ribbon. You can get really cheesy in a big hurry. There is a difference between making a painting positive and turning it into a fricking petting zoo.

A few more quick biographical notes on the Nevelson master. After graduating art school Van Assaerts married the daughter of a highly regarded officer in the shoe bureaucracy. His numerous connections in the other ministries gave him access to many goods. Dirk and his young wife, Sepsis, received bushels and bushels of potatoes through her father. Never would the little family know hunger, even in hard times Sepsis family provided more potatoes than they could ever eat. Often Dirk would barter with other subjects for tobacco or lottery tickets. Dirks young wife, accustomed to privilege and the prestige that officers are due, yearned for more than the young artist could really provide for her. Shopping made her comfortable, and eating helped too. As her body began to grow and extend protuberances of various sorts, Dirk knew he had a problem.

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Writing these Encyclopedia is extremely time con suming and I am trying to get my Texas art finished and out the door. The art has to come first and today for example, I had to get a whole days painting in before I could write the blog. If I am a little more random in my postings presently I apologize. All I do is work.
I have two open spots in my workshop, below is the broadside from the sponsors of the workshop.

JCAS presents Stapleton Kearns Plein Air Painting Workshop

prior to the Cranford Plein Air Event “Paint the Town”.

June 4,5,6^th

^{The cost of the workshop is $300.00 for three intense days.}

^{To find out more or to register visit www.jcas.org}

^{visit us on Facebook}

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DUMB DESIGN IDEAS, FENCIN EM OUT

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DUMB DESIGN IDEAS

FENCIN EM OUT

Here is another painting from the sorry ouvre of Dirk Van Assaerts, recently rediscovered tyro Dutch painter of the 17th century. As usual with Mr. Assaerts paintings this one carries a fatal flaw. In this painting he has fenced the viewer out of the picture. Instead of a graceful entrance carrying us to the subject, there is a barrier to our access. We are compelled to jump over this distracting foreground (tearing our culottes in the process and revealing our possibly non-compliant areas) in order to continue our stroll up to the mighty castle of the Knights of Cooperation.

Assaerts or the Nevelson master as he is commonly known, finished his stint at the government art school for his county. The 790 million dollar structure in which it was housed cost more than every artist in his conformity district had made in all of recorded history. The tuition was as much as the income a peoples union officer might earn in a year, but he was fortunate to be able to borrow it from his parish's Subsidized Loan Facilitators. His training was heavy on theory but rather short on painting skills, however his teachers had been very encouraging as his work did push the envelope like the other "best and more obedient" students in his cohort.

The people who were buying the paintings in the marketplace seemed not to care about "real art" and were only buying paintings that matched the colors of their hovels. His natural response then, was to inflate his thin ideas into a series of enormous paintings the size of boxcars, with abstracted representations of sparkling knitting needles piercing the potatoes around which his society was constructed. Dirk knew for certain that the political implications of his art were sure to give him a place in art history. The dealers, who cared only for profit, (and had recently insisted on being called gallerists, a title that recognized where they stood around, rather their burden of selling the art) were hesitant to represent an undiscovered artist of such enormous talent, no matter how he numbered or titled his work. His prices (as high as the most established artists in his conformity district) would have brought him the fine income he had been assured he was owed by his friends and relatives.

To hold him over until the world realized his genius, he took a job as a "master painting teacher" in a nearby daycare center, married, secured a carriage loan, and then a mortgage. His first child, a girl he named Anathema was born later that week.

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DUMB DESIGN IDEAS, ROCK POTATION

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DUMB DESIGN IDEAS
ROCK POTATION

The Nevelson master was born the son of a shiftless locksmith and cracksman in the risk averse 17th century town of East Delft. Across the canal from Delft itself, East Delft was a dangerous teeming slum with few opportunities for young men, particularly in arts administration and the then underdeveloped social services net weaving industries. Unable to afford a secure job with the compliance ministry, he drifted into a government art school where thousands of young men and women were groomed for the dozens of positions in the private sector art market. His story is a cautionary tale to all who major in the fine arts, obey their teachers and then are compelled to compete against the disobedient, incessantly slaving, wholly unlicensed entrepreneurs who infest the art world.

The painting above is another example from the recently discovered trove of the tyro's work. As usual it contains a glaring fault, POTATION. Many contemporary painters have filled their stream and river scenes with potatoes and other curds and lumps, but the effortless exposition in this piece is startling for its concise delineation of the potato forms.

Introduced only a few years before the tyros birth as ballast in the holds of swift Dutch triremes, the humble potato quickly became a staple of the low countries Kulaks diets. Suddenly available in massive quantities from the selenium rich alluvial plains of the tepid Azores and Peloponnesian islands, the potato captured the 17th century imagination in a way barely understandable to our contemporary ungulate fed society. The sight of various tuber cults, and secret societies drunk on starch and carrying burning torches, singing Foreigner's haunting "I Want to Know What Love is", while staggering with their stout bodies back to the slums of East Delft must have been a shocking one for a naive young boy raised on parboiled bulgur and ergot laden rye.

His natural reaction was to fill his paintings with the bulbous forms of the attractive and repetitive spuds. Perhaps you have done the same?

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DUMB DESIGN IDEAS Potato edition

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DUMB DESIGN IDEAS
POTATOES

Another find from the Nevelson master this painting is a fine example of a design flaw. Painted on the lid of a White Owl box, ( the artists white is suspected to be the ground up plastic mouthpieces from those same smokes ) this small painting contains a design problem called potation. What is that, you might well ask?

POTATION, THE REPETITION OF THE SAME SHAPE AND DIMENSION INSTEAD OF VARIED AND INTERESTING SHAPES, GIVES AN AMATEURISH AND ANNOYING ARTIFICIALITY.

If you again look at the painting above, or in your pamphlets, you will notice that the trees and the clouds are all of the same potato shape. Everyone who begins to paint makes this mistake. The ability to make interesting and varied shapes is developed and not instinctive. Like everything else in painting it must be learned, no one gets much for free.

When you see granny's paintings sold by her disgusted heirs at a yard sale, this is one of the most common faults. E-bay is full of modestly priced paintings by retired executives that are full of potato shapes. Someone once remarked that all amateur painting looks the same, and much of it does, because they all contain the same things unlearned.

So don't POTATE! as you paint, and when you study your work, police your shapes. Look for repletion of the same elements and intervals between them. The more different your shapes are from one another the longer you will hold the viewer.

Scholars researching the Nevelson master may have discovered his identity, one Dirk Van Assaerts from East Delft. Letters and civil records have come to light showing that he was a successful teacher and arts administrator too, winning numerous grants and subsidies. Van Assaerts left volumes of correspondence and opening to scholars a unique view into the life of a 17th century tyro. In coming posts I will reveal what contemporary scholarship has to say about this remarkable man.

DEBEAKIFICATION

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DUMB DESIGN IDEAS
DEBEAKIFICATION

Often referred to as the Nevelson master, the works of the unknown Dutch tyro are finally receiving the attention that has so long been denied them. Their suitability as a teaching device has bestowed on them an importance that their quality could never have achieved. Below is a second very similar painting from the Nevelson master believed to have been retouched by another (and modestly more skilled) hand. In this version a number of changes have been made to ameliorate the faults of the other shown above.

A pattern of lights and darks has been established over, under, around, and through the beak area to camouflage its existence. The shape of the beak has been subordinated to a value structure that arrays lights and darks in shapes unrelated to its beakish outline. This is a little like the images you have seen of rattlesnakes curled up in dry leaves or sofa cushions. It takes a moment for our eye to pick the viper out as their outlines are broken up by the patterns they bear on their thick coils.

The unknown retouching artist has darkened a few passages in the sky to direct attention away from the beak area as well. More contrast and detail has been added to the tree at right to win your eye to another part of the picture. I have heard stories of a bird who will feign a broken wing and flap feebly across the ground as if injured, away from her nest, to distract and lure predators from her young. The detail added to the tree on the right does this, it weights the picture a little differently and pulls our interest over to the right.

The gap between the beak structure and the left hand margin of the picture has been increased also. The closer a beak is to the opposite rabbet of the canvas, the harder it is for the viewer to circumnavigate it. A good clear passageway over there will help.

The reflections in the water and the cheesy little sailboat on the right add vertical shapes to the area to overcome the thrusting knife like shape of the offending beak. The boat crosses and shortens the hard line at its base, deempathisizing its structure even more.

There are sometimes solutions to dealing with problem shapes in nature, often they have to do with deemphasizing them or breaking up their lines through camouflage.

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DUMB DESIGN IDEAS 4

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DUMB DESIGN IDEAS
ONE FOR EACH EYE

Here is another of our Dutch tyros efforts. As additional biographical information becomes available on this artist I am sure we shall learn that every aspect of his life was as misguided and poorly conceived as his art. And Oh! the poor helpmate who must have contended with his foolishness and pretended to have pride in an artist of so limited ability. How vexed she must have been when other artist's wives rode in elegant carriages and wore their truncated shifts of padded organza! The illusion of love must have been hard to maintain, but it is the ability of caring women to bear the burden of a useless man with only continual complaint as a rod for his correction.

Like every one of his works, this one contains a dreadful error. Mistakes in painting preexist their commission. They are out there just waiting to be made. Their legions are so great that I can only catalogue them in wonderment.

We have only to look at this picture to recognize its chief error, the painting has two trees each being of equal importance in the tableau. Such a fault destroys our viewers attention as his eye travels betwixt the two, confounded, unable to light upon one and know it for the subject. A painting having but a single tree of great import, and with its brothers subordinated to it, would be a finer thing than this mistaken daub.

Again, a greater effect made be had by the inclusion of but a single subject. Better then, to forswear a second tree and include but the one, for it is impossible to command all of nature on a single canvas, better to choose but a single prize from her unfettered bodice. Nor can I think other than that:

A PAINTING MUST HAVE BUT A SINGLE SUBJECT, IT MAY CONTAIN OTHER ELEMENTS BUT THEY MUST BE SUBORDINATED TO THE SUBJECT AND SUPPORT ITS ROLL.

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DUMB DESIGN IDEAS, THE BEAK

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DUMB DESIGN IDEAS
THE BEAK

A selection from the Nevelson Wing collection, featuring another of the landscapes of a forgotten painter from wherever Dutch people live. As all of his paintings seem to bear alarming faults I will choose one at random. Let's say you and I examine this one!

This painting contains the BEAK ERROR! The artist has recorded this lovely summer scene just as he saw it splayed before him. The distant headland or bend in the receding lake shore becomes a thrusting beak shape. How like a sharpened hot dog it appears!

Frantically the tyro artist installed big clouds and vertical trees on one side but he just couldn't counterbalance the thrusting jagged beak. The pitiful collection of his life's work, shows that not occasionally, but every single time he was on the water he painted those beaks! The swells who frequented the better galleries would never have dreamed of buying his work!

It's a shame no one was there to stop our artist friend so long ago, before he had painted dozens if not hundreds of paintings, with large, prominent beak structures amidships. You see, the shapes around a river or a small bay have that same appearance everywhere. They occur nearly every time you are on a body of water, they are ubiquitous. But they invite one to make a giant dagger shape right in the middle of your canvas. And while one or two beakish designs "might" enhance a show, too many would be unsettling, and none would be the ideal.

I have personally painted an enormous number of beaks, particularly in Acadia National Park. I have at once to believe I have control over beakyness and then suddenly I have made another. So whether at your compliance officers lakeshore cottage or tethered to the rocks of a tumultuous sea, do be careful of the beak.

A foreground dilemma!

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DUMB DESIGN IDEAS

A foreground dilemma!

Above is one of a pair of recently discovered paintings from the trove found quite by accident in the Nevelson wing of a large and important American museum. This sorry painting by a deservedly forgotten tyro from the seventeenth century, is a fine example of an artist placing the "footlights" too close to their viewing position. He believed by dint of hard work, soft edges and careful arrangement he could paint all that stuff around his ankles. But, up close, nature was teeming with legions of little assertive details that jostled for his attention. Somehow the whole foreground became its very own picture, with a cast of thousands!

If we only had our eyes set one above the other in our heads, we could see the picture at a glance. But since our eyes are paired side by side we must "lift" our eyes to travel from the foreground to the middle and background assembly area. This unpleasant 'lifting" of our eyes bothers our attention spans, and in that brief unconnected synaptic instant in which we are transferring our vision upward to the middle ground and beyond, our whole concentration is lost!

Below is a second painting, identical to the first, except on his second attempt the artist left out the first fifty feet in front of himself! Simply did not place it on the canvas at all. He didn't try to ameliorate its edges or rearrange it's twining complexity, he just frickin left it out!

What a better solution then, to the problem of bristling irrelevant detail ALWAYS splotching the bottom third of a painting? What if I want em looking elsewhere, perhaps at the little boats or the passing river? Why should my subject have to compete with, or indeed, wait behind a thicket of beckoning thorns and vines, and some little rocks. and that clump of grass over there, and the bush, there's the bush! ..............and its shadow.

Turn again to your pamphlets, and look at the broad history of landscape painting to see how able artists working with measured thought produced a better yesterday.

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DUMB DESIGN IDEAS The Three Striper!

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DUMB DESIGN IDEAS

The Three Striper!

The discovery of a group of Dutch painting hidden behind a large Louise Nevelson assemblage that was removed for fumigation by a major American museum, has provided an opportunity for me to point out some errors of judgment by a little known painter. The example above is a triple striper design.

The tyro artist was invited to the lakeside cottage of a friend or compliance officer. He was told repeatedly what a lovely view of Chancrebristle Lake it had, and that a great painting might be made there with ease!. And indeed, it did have a fine view, any officer would be proud to have his family there on Holiday! However when our tyro artist completed this painting it contained a grievous fault! Yes, it did indeed.

You see, all of the elements in this painting run from one side of the canvas to the other! Like stripes on a mattress. What could be more static! Our tyro knew he had copied the scene in front of him with the utmost fidelity, yet the painting was not attractive, or valuable. That's because;

He was looking for nouns (in this case, the lake) rather than an arrangement of attractive and valuable shapes that set one another off!

It seems there are many lovely places that may present the tyro artist with unwelcome challenges. How much better if he had eschewed the expected lake view and found a more dynamic arrangement. Perhaps he could have pulled his easel back and obtained a more varied and pleasing foreground, or looked along the receding line of the lakeshore and at the small copse of tender withies arrayed there.

Encyclopedia of dumb design ideas

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DUMB DESIGN IDEAS

Here is a dumb design idea. Placing something so that it stands right on the frame, like this tree, is a dumb design idea. The reason why it doesn't work is that it connects the frame and the painting together in an unnatural relationship. The two are merged, rather than the frame sitting separately and marking the picture off from the rest of the world, like an unprincipled journalist, the frame has made itself part of the story.

Tangents, or meeting points of lines that draw undo attention to themselves are a known problem, I guess I should do a post on those, but a tangent with the edge of the canvas is an unspeakable horror.

So don't stand trees, little guys, houses or whatever, on the frame. Throw those footlights, the beginning of the picture, out far enough that you don't have this problem. Foregrounds are tricky and the further from your feet yours begins, the easier it will be to make a convincing job of it.

I was going to write on Manet tonight, but folks in the comments urged me to read The Judgement of Paris, about Manet and Meissioner, so I ordered it from Amazon and bought the rush shipping. It is the new book and all of my references are old, so I will get back to you on that soonly.

Stupid design ideas 2

Encyclopedia of Dumb Design Ideas

Here are better graphics for the road post I did yesterday. Above is the road jammed up against the edge of the canvas. As you can see it is an annoying distraction. The eye follows it and is directed nowhere.

Above is the road again, leading the viewer into the painting and to it's subject matter. Of course there are a lot of variations on this design , but the idea is not to dump the viewer into the side of the painting.

This road is whats called a LEADING LINE. A leading line is the main line of a design that leads you through the painting. Not all designs have them of course, but many do. There are few absolutes in the design game, but many examples of better and worse.

Above is a painting I made yesterday, its a 16 by 20. I will probably fool with it in the studio, but just to clean up a few edges and drop in a few highlights and a few accents.

Encyclopedia of dumb design ideas 1

Encyclopedia of dumb design ideas





Sorry I am posting late today. Internet access is hard to come by sometimes, but I will do my best. If I have to miss a day, I apologize in advance.

Above is a dumb design idea. The road is jammed against the side of the frame. Often this is the way that nature actually appears before you, so watch out for it! Remember that a road leads you into a picture, this one leads the viewer in and then throws them roughly against the frame over on the left.

I have seen roads tortured into vertical sections as the artist tries to keep them inside the painting. The answer is to either move your easel before you start work, as soon as you have realized the problem. The second solution if that is impossible is to move the road to lead through the middle of the painting to it's destination.

Roads leading into paintings are a great device and many fine paintings have them, BUT can be extremely difficult to paint. Unless I am in a location where the road looks just about right, I am very leery of them. Often I will invent most of a road rather than go with what is actually offered.
More on this soon, I have painted lots of country roads and had more than my share of disasters.