Hi, Ian Roberts and Mastering Composition. So this
week we're going to talk about edges. Edges are how you orchestrate how the viewer looks around your
painting. It's foundational to the design of your painting. Now just a comment about the studio tour
last week. I did get a lot of comments - I'm getting a lot of comments with questions in them, and
I'm reading them and I'm going to consolidate all those, I'm answering some, I'm going to
consolidate all those and we're going to do a live chat, a live stream YouTube,
and we'll answer all those different questions and I'll give you, I'll let you know in advance so
that you can pose other questions and you can even pose them live as well, and I also discovered
something else about YouTube that when I answer it I never hear back from anybody, and I was always
a little like, "Well I guess they got the answer..." and just today I discovered that, oh you click that
and you see what the answers were and I see all kinds of people responded to my, anyway, I'm sorry
I never responded back because I never saw them! Anyway, this week we're going to paint
this image, which is the last of the five photographs I showed you several weeks ago.
Mow if you paint in a representational way, the tendency is to overtell, to not leave enough to
the imagination of the viewer. So edges have a lot to do with how we do that. You know, if you think of
a cartoon with a black line around the whole thing, it's very clear what the thing is, and what the
thing is not. So in losing edges the viewer has to we have to pull them in because they have to
fill in and it's amazing how much actually people do fill in. You give them a few hints and they
can fill in a lot. So we're going to look at a few master paintings, three master paintings,
just to see how they are losing edges and then we'll go to the demonstration for this
week. So Caravaggio has certainly crisp edges here and here where he wants them, but look at
the line of the hair, I mean it's hardly visible. The line of the beard down in there is
hardly visible. This just almost gets lost. This we can only just see, we can only just
see, and where the cloak is coming down here, it's gone - we don't know where it is. And with
Vermeer, he's wanting to pull us to this edge here, and you can see how soft this is, this is the back
of the neck completely disappears the back here. He's releasing our attention from there, so that
we come forward to where he wants us to look. So look at how he's releasing those edges so that
that eye falls back behind the nose and how soft those edges are so that it it moves back into
space. This edge here is really completely gone - we can fill it in! But it's pretty much gone. And
there's a place right under there where the edge is gone and like that how soft it is, but all those
things are just forcing our attention to where he wants us to look and releasing our attention
from where he doesn't want us to look. In the same idea, I want the attention on him and on the light
here. And so I'm going to simplify everything here to kind of work with that, so all this stuff here
is going to get simplified and get pushed back so it's one big dark. And all this stuff here, this is
all bleached out now so I'm just gonna put lemons or peaches or something there, and get rid of those
bags, get rid of that bag, and just simplify it to a figure, three sort of things of fruit or something,
a big pillar, and a big dark. Here's the demo. So I'm just putting in, you know sometimes I sort
of block in things very carefully shape by shape, but this has a huge area of real darks and
I'm putting the whole thing in as dark. That's, in terms of color it's a little
bit of ivory black sometimes, phthalo green and alizarin sometimes. I'm adding
orange and other colors to it so it's not just one color, but you'll see that I'm just sort of
going for the big shapes, trying to find that green. Everything in the background is just going to
have little touches of information to sort of bring it alive, but just sort of a color like
a clean thing and then now I'm starting to lose that edge, right? I'm starting to push
that dark so that edge sort of disappears back into there. I'm even pushing it away even
more see I'm practically, you can hardly see it now. But that's the whole thing of just
pushing and getting rid of those edges so that it releases it and you sort of have your
attention really get pulled to the parts where you want the viewer to look. So I'm just sort
of putting in some of the shadow shapes on the thing and then these are shadows
right, those are those two white bins, they're shadowed uh and then I'm leaving a space
there for some light, uh which we'll get in a minute and those are just kind of the things with
the information on them for the price or whatever. And now you'll see I'm just sort of putting in
some shapes in the background, not much information, but just a little bit here, a touch there, and
you're going to fill in the rest. I mean, I hope. That's the intention, that there's just enough
back there to say that there's information there, but you're the one that fills in all the details
and says "Oh I see, that's background" like that's I think that figure back there, and I just put him in,
this is the hit of sunlight just behind the figure and you know it's really important to kind
of give us a sense of all the figures here and we're traveling back through space to where
that sunlight is and then the other stuff is there and you see that little mark I
made on the other side of the coat I thought all of a sudden jogs the figure into
like "Oh I see how wide he is" and then there's the sunlight hitting that corner, and then these are
lemons or something I just you know I completely simplified that whole thing so there's just
fruit, there's none of those bags and things. But you can see and then now I'm starting
on the face and I spend quite a bit of time on the face because it's really where I want you
to look so there's just a big shadow shape there and the shadow side of the little hat. and then
that's his t-shirt. and then now some of the light hitting the the coat up at the top the only
place it does... Now this is where the light starts bouncing back into it, and we start getting some,
you know, some nice little colors going on in there, and it sort of creates more form in that
coat. And then we start hitting the lit side and all of a sudden we start to see what this
figure's doing. So here I'm having to sort of with a smaller brush and the mall stick, you
see my hand is resting on that that thing there. So you just need to sort of establish the shadow
behind the collar and the light on the hat. I'm sure there's a specific name for those hats but
I don't know what it is and I'll soften that edge between the light and the dark in a moment. I just
want to keep the paint clean so I can do the top. And, you know, you start to get a sense of "Oh
I see" then you see that pure red, pretty much, for that um ear, and then I'm carving back with
black to just clean up the shapes, putting some texture back into that big post there of marble
or concrete or whatever it is, and I'm softening that edge up at the top to release it up there
because I don't want you to look up there, and then you just sort of get a little hit of light
along there a couple of little touches of light. And the whole thing, all that background,
everything just kind of gels into one image. And there's the finished painting. And I really
like the way all those things sort of disappear into the dark, sort of like an old master painting,
so that all those edges and things are just lost and the things that I want you to look
at are coming forward and are being enhanced. Because edges are so fundamental I've
pulled one from my one I did last year that I'm going to link so you could watch another one
just so you kind of fill it in a little bit more. But try it in your next painting - just let an
edge go. Trust the viewer to fill in something for you. That link to the video should be right
there now and you can watch that other video on edges and there's two or three others - I'll
create a playlist so that each one will link to the next or you write type in edges in
on my channel and you'll find the playlist and then you can watch them because I think
it'll be useful just to kind of focus on that one idea now that we're thinking about it. So
as always I hope you found the video helpful. I hope you have a fantastic week. I
will see you on Tuesday. Bye, for now.
