Creative Problems In Picture Making Manuel Tolegian

WHEN a painter is asked to write about photography it is usually because he's supposed to know a lot about pictures. Such knowledge is an essential part of any good artist's equipment, so he will know what has been done and what is being done in his own medium at least, and have a somewhat less intimate knowledge of work in other mediums. But there are two ways by which one comes to know pictures. By seeing and by doing. Painters and photographers have roughly equal opportunities to learn by seeing the work of others, but photographers have a tremendous advantage when it comes to learning by doing. Because of the comparatively short time required to complete a photograph the photographer can make a hundred pictures to the painter's one. This opportunity to multiply experience is much envied by workers in other mediums, for practice and more practice is vastly important to any artist.

I use photography primarily as an aid to painting. It partly replaces and supplements the sketch book. Photographs are extremely helpful, for example, in painting any aspect of action which a model could not maintain as a pose. A number of slight variations of the action can be photographed, the most suitable one selected and the painter can then be quite sure that he will have the action just right in his painting. In the case of the picture reproduced here the point of view was selected and the scene carefully studied. The photograph was then made to serve as an aid to memory and the painting was executed in the studio. I usually make my own photographs but when there is a more skillful photographer about I am glad to take advantage of the chance to get a better photograph than I would probably turn out. In this case the photograph was made by Mr. Arvil Parker, a very skillful photographer and it is only fair to record that he was aware that conditions were not right when the photograph was made. Consequently criticism of the photograph does not imply criticism of Mr. Parker's photographic ability.

Regardless of the medium, all artists have one major problem in common. They must develop the ability to "feel into" their subject matter. To distill the emotional essence of the material through the filter of their own personality and to then produce a picture which will transmit this experienced emotion to the observer. As an eminent critic has stated in slightly different context. "The artist must have the supreme gift of translating experienced emotion into works of art which give off emotion." The above is an all too brief statement of an extremely complex function. It must remain so since I wish to devote the space available to an examination of the principal method or procedure, we might almost say technique, by means of which the artist fulfills the above mentioned function.

Visualizing The Picture

Simply stated it is this: a complete imaginative visualization of the picture before any work is done. The artist must be able to clearly see the complete picture in his mind's eye. At this point the mature artist can examine his imagined picture carefully. Improve on it, refine it, make sure that it "gives off the experienced emotion." The rest is mere execution, a matter of craftsmanship. Thus it should be plain that the artistic value of a picture is largely determined before production is even begun.

I am told that many photographers, particularly comparative beginners, almost entirely overlook this indispensable part of the picture making procedure. Such a claim appears to be substantiated by many of the photographs which I have seen, but such a condition is not hard to understand when one considers the nature of the photographic process. The photographer is so close to immediate reality that it is difficult for him to become fully aware of the important part which the imaginative function must play in picture making. Furthermore, he can make a photograph in an instant by a mere click of the shutter. The easy simplicity of this operation is bound to work against full visualization. The painter, on the other hand, is virtually compelled to visualize his picture in advance for it is next to impossible for him to begin his drawing until the picture is clear in his mind.

It does little good, of course, to simply tell a student that he must visualize his pictures in advance. No information is really useful until it becomes an actual part of our experience. It is my hope that a comparison of the fully realized painting with the somewhat inadequate photograph will make the nature and importance of the procedure under discussion, fully apparent to the reader. When the print of "View of Smartsville" was sent to me a few days after we took the photograph together it seemed to lack three important things which my memory and imagination had carried home. First, the brilliance and sparkle of the general landscape (in which color plays an important but not paramount part) ; second, it had no dominant theme (not enough strength at least) ;and third, no sky, or rather a clear blue sky which is the same as no sky in a black and white print. I had, for some unknown reason, imagined a very dramatic sky even though none was there. This may or may not be within the artist's license. There were other things that disturbed me: too many distractions, too much in the picture; the enormous sweep and the rhythms created by the space in the foreground are abruptly stopped by the dark row of trees in the middleground. This makes the landscape prominent in the foreground only. The tone values of various important objects, such as the trees, grass-land and cattle in the foreground, are generally greyish. If the whole tonal arrangement is analyzed we find it not consistent; it has no particular strength of direction or pattern. The photograph lacks that certain animation which was there but was not interpreted by the print.

To organize a picture the artist deals primarily with forms, the shapes of things, and the rhythms these forms create. He is concerned also with tonal arrangements, and with color, light, perspective and texture. In his imagination he has a mood or strong image established and he aspires to approximate this with the medium. This should prove, if anything, that a picture is the most human of all things, and unless it is, it can't be a great picture! It must have mood or expression or anything that strongly characterizes even a single phase of the subject to be depicted. In the painting "View of Smartsville" the mood is established by the stormy sky, which at first taints and influences the whole landscape; but the beholder of the painting does not look at the sky as though it were a fixed thing. He becomes aware of the dominant properties, and then moves on. This is deliberately a problem of animated design which harmoniously fits in with the rhythms created by other parts of the landscape. The sky is animated by forms which harmonize with the movement of forms in the foreground. This is easily discernible by turning both the picture of the painting and the photograph, upside down. Actually the sky is entirely my own creation in an endeavor to recapture the sparkle the landscape originally had. I cannot imagine how it would be possible to show the landscape at its best without the dramatic sky. But, of course, another artist would probably visualize the thing quite differently. Note that the dominant theme in the landscape, the church, comes out more strongly because of the darkened sky. The light and color, too, play an important part in bringing out the hill on which the church sings, bathed in the warmth of summer sunshine. In the painting there are no distracting shapes or forms or tonal disturbances, this gives breathing space to featured areas. Note, too, that in the background beyond the church, by strategic illumination of the various hills, one hill is made to overlap the other, thus creating much-needed background space. This balances the sweeping vastness of the foreground space which, in turn, emphasizes at least the major spacial areas of the picture.

In the photograph, the foreground occupies about three times as much area in the picture-plane as does the background, which is obviously due to the viewpoint of the camera. This viewpoint is almost literally duplicated in the painting: but there is an illusion of more visual space in the fore-shortened background, and this is achieved, as previously explained, by spot illumination of the many over-lapping hills which recede in some places to infinity. In this manner, by creating an illusion of distance, the background actually is made to have as much visual space as the foreground and thus assumes the much needed spacial Balance. The foreground as well as the background of the painting has been darkened. These dark areas assume secondary importance to the main theme of the church. In the foreground, the man with the dogs walking down the road, the hay rake, the gullies cut into the small embankment. the darkened trees with their white bark, and a small diffusion of light are all deliberately held in restraint. The background too, has nothing in it overly bright; there are shaded hills with a flicker of light on them which seems to come from a break in the clouds. All these objects are restrained to give increasing strength and vigor to the light on the main theme.

Restraint does not mean that these areas are dead ones or that they have no attraction of their own. On the contrary, great care was exercised in painting the details so that no part of the dark areas looked too flat or too black, and objects of secondary interest were inserted so that no picture space would be lost which should be used to build up the theme. The immediate foreground in the photograph has an interesting rhythm pattern made by the row of horse-shoe shaped trees which carry the eye into the picture quite gracefully. They seem to envelop the cattle, frame them as it were; I have duplicated this in the painting because it helps lead the eye to the right places. One thing that does not satisfy the eye in the photograph, however, is that these trees look lifeless and shapeless; they carry no weight, they will soon tire the eye or the eye will soon lose interest. And this is fatal to any picture. In the painting you will note the point of view has been raised slightly. This has automatically lowered the hill on which the cattle are grazing, and has elevated even higher the hill on which the church rests. There is a road, too, which goes down and around the left, repeating the design of the trees. The man with the dogs, of course, adds human interest to the picture, and the rake symbolizes the farm. The whole picture has an air of mystery created thus far by the sky and darkened foreground. We have also begun some kind of an attraction, not too arresting to be sure, but one which arouses curiosity and also rewards the eye to a certain point. However, these attractions must be kept within the scope of the whole tonal pattern of the picture for the purposes of harmony and permanence of the precise effect the artist wants to create.

At this point the process should be stopped. The picture is complete. I suppose this article should close with at least a brief indication of how the photograph could be made into a more successful picture. First, it should be noted that the photographer's visualization and treatment of this scene would certainly be different from mine. Leaving that aside, it seems plain that the first essential for an improved photo-graph would be a change of lighting. If this scene were photographed under a strong back lighting coming also from the left, much of the com-positional strength seen in the painting would be brought to the photo-graph. The trees in the foreground and in the left middle distance would take on needed strength and would be distinguished in tone value from the pasture. Such lighting would also reduce the amount of distracting detail in the clutter of buildings in the middle distance, and would more or less concentrate the strongest lighting on the church and the pasture and cattle where it is desired. Since it is hardly practical to wait for one to appear I can see no reason why the photographer should not introduce a suitable cloud into this landscape if it gives him the effect he is after. A fairly dark back lighted cloud with an opening well to the left which would appear as the source of light, would make it possible to increase the concentration of the light on the church and pasture by dodging without the device being evident. The whole point of this article then revolves around what I hope is now an obvious fact. That an imaginative visualization of this scene would instantly make clear that the lighting was not right for photography, but that the material contains great possibilities under proper conditions.

We can, all of us, visualize those proper conditions by using our imaginations as an artist must. As one who teaches as well as practices art I am interested in discovering whether the method of elucidation used in this article meets with the approval of readers. Consequently comments sent in care of this magazine will be appreciated.

COMPARATIVE SUMMARY

The Photograph

1. No outstanding mood.
2. Too many extraneous objects, appearing over-crowded.
3. Tonal pattern and forms irregular and disconnected.
4. Absence of sky, which makes a rest area too vast, consequently the eye is not confined within the picture.
5. Too much sweeping foreground space, which makes an abrupt stop at the middle-ground.
6. No sustained secondary point of interest in foreground or hack-ground.

The Painting

1. A strong effort for dramatic effect.
2. Elimination of all distracting things, especially about the main theme.
3. An attempt to harmonize tone and form patterns into an animated whole.
4. A dramatic sky designed to guide the eye in a continuous, harmonious rhythm all over the picture.
5. An immediate foreground with objects of interest to retard the eye and balance comparative background areas beyond the middle-ground.
6. Several points of interest clearly defined

1. church
2. cattle
3. darkened foreground
4. sky and background.