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No Silhouette, No Painting

Funny how you can almost understand a concept, teach a concept, but it isn’t until someone says something as simple as “no silhouette, no painting” that the concept becomes an epiphany.

I gorged myself on art in the month of June.  I went to New Mexico where I saw two incredible exhibitions at the International Association of Pastel Societies.  While I was there I visited Santa Fe and the smorgasbord of galleries within the city.  A week later I was in Petoskey, Michigan to attend the Oil Painters of America Salon Exhibition.  Almost 400 outstanding oil paintings flank the walls of the Crooked Tree Arts Center.  Hung salon style the paintings are stacked from floor to ceiling.  The quantity and quality of the paintings is overwhelming and it is impossible to see the show in one visit.

I always look for a common thread for the paintings that have the “Wow” factor.  Over the years I have come to understand that simplicity is the key to great work.  This is a concept that is easy to say but difficult to put into practice.  During the OPA opening there was a demonstration by Marc Hanson who is a fantastic landscape painter.  As he began his demo he laid in the dark masses of the composition.  He was not painting things such as trees or fence posts but a series of dark shapes that moved the eye around the canvas.  As he laid them in he made the statement “no silhouette no painting.”  For me that was an “aha” moment.  He continued to build the painting into this silhouette, enhancing it with interesting edges and colors but he never broke away from his original light and dark structure.

What is a silhouette?  The silhouette of a painting is the value structure reduced to its simplest arrangement of black and white.  This is referred to as Notan in Japan and has been used by artists for centuries to create the bones of their compositions. The concept behind Notan is this: If the silhouette looks good the painting looks good.  Paintings lose their visual punch when artists forgo the simplicity of light and dark and begin to paint “things” without thought of how they relate to the surrounding values.  If the details are kept within their respective value range, or light and dark, they will not break up the silhouette.  Silhouettes are never spotty with bits of light and dark jumbled across the canvas. They are most powerful when one value dominates and the less dominate value creates a thread of light or dark for the eye to follow.

Cotopaxi by Fredric Church is a great example of the power of simplicity. The fiery sunset behind the erupting volcano reflects into the surrounding landscape.  At the Detroit Institute of Art this painting demands attention from far away.  That is because as intricate as this painting is, Church never lost sight of the silhouette. Church was never one to shirk on detail and every corner of this painting is lavishly filled with small elements that delight the eye up close.  While the details of Cotopaxi may enchant the real presence of the painting can be seen from across the room.

  I found the silhouette of these images by using Adobe Photoshop.  First I turned them into grayscale and then used posterize to reduce them into two values.

This next painting of a boy by John Singer Sargent is a great example of the power of silhouette in a portrait.  When this painting is reduced to two values the face of the boy is still present and foremost. The black and white pattern is used to create light falling on a human form.  Nostrils, eyelashes and other features that can easily be expressed as symbols are subdued within the value structure. Sargent kept this silhouette even though he added in the embellishments that made the portrait look like a unique person.  The key to simplicity is creating a silhouette which becomes a structure to hang your values and colors on. 

 Simplicity is the key to great painting. “No silhouette, no painting,” four words that can take your painting to a new level.

In my next post I will show how artists can use a simple tool to put the idea of silhouette into their work.

Until then,

Happy Painting!

Vianna