Art supply companies sell pre-stretched canvases, wood and hardboard panels with only a limited number of dimensions. Standard width/length ratios are 1 x 1, 1 x 2, 2 x 3, 3 x 4 and 4 x 5. If I want to use a photograph of my camera as a motif, a 2 x 3 panel would be the most suitable to represent the full picture. Musing on dimensions, the golden ratio came to mind – 1 x 1.618 – easy to remember because 1.6 km equal a mile.
Here is a photograph cropped to fit the golden ratio with respect to width and length:
The next image with a 2 x 3 ratio would require the least cropping of a photograph shot by my camera if the horizon had been horizontal. As it happened, the horizon had to be straightened in AP.
Next, a crop giving a ratio of 3 x 4:
Still closer to a square with a ratio of 4 x 5:
Omitting a square, the final image has a 2 x 1 ratio:
Do you spend much time deciding on the format for presenting a motif that you are interested in?
Birgit:
I have always wondered why the stretcher makers don’t just have a series of sizes in golden ratio proportions. My only conclusion is a practical one: the present proportions allow the maker to use wood more efficiently as the golden ratio would entail some irregular cutoffs. This consideration gains more emphasis at the framing level where cutoffs can be an issue of considerable expense.
Jay,
I infer from your comment that you find the golden ratio proportion pleasing.
Your explanation about the cost sounds plausible.
But one may be able to get close to the golden ratio proportion. Checking prices on maple panels at http://www.art-boards.com/MCPriceList.html,
I learned that 21 x 14 and 22 5/8 x 14 panels cost $42.75 and $43.17, respectively.
Birgit,
I’ve just been thinking about the ratio of camera view to canvas — now you’ve given me the push I need to actually work it out. I can change ratios on my digital, but I don’t have the slightest idea which one is closest to the 3 x 4 that I use most often to paint on. On the other hand, I find playing with what I’m seeing/what space I have to paint on/ what the camera might see to be part of the fun. So I’m not sure I want to know. But now I definitely will have to sort it out.
I also had one of the duh moments a few days ago. I’ve been inveighing against painting from photographs on the grounds that the camera fixes things very artificially. But as I was photographing on the Alsea River, that runs into the Pacific at Waldport, Oregon, I realized that zoom lenses have really changed the “Brownie” camera effect to something more like what we actually can see. This has been heightened by point-and-shoot digitals with their zoom lenses and automatic light changing meters. Cameras still don’t have the eye/ body connections of movement and tactility, but they are now greatly different from what they were 30 –50 years ago, particularly for the general public.
June,
I have been searching in vain for your post from a couple of years ago in which, to my mind, you convincingly demonstrated how much more exciting a hilly landscape can look in a pleine air painting compared to what can be captured with a camera. You compared a photograph taken near a ranch in the John Day area (?) with your some of your paintings from that region. These thoughts remind me of what you discussed in your last post, namely, reality captured by a camera versus the distorted perceptions of our minds.
I am interested in trying out different ratios for paintings, irrespective of whether they represent a view from photograph, a fantasy or a pleine air painting.
Perhaps, the readily available 3 x 4 panels are a good choice because they come closest to the golden ratio proportion?
Birgit,
The 3 x 4 ratio panels are a good choice because they fit in my wet canvas pleine air boxes –snort — (They are actually 12 x 16″, although I also sometimes paint on 18 x 24″ ones, for the same reason). The boxes keep the oils from getting on Jer’s car, which keeps our marriage intact. Golden ratios come in various forms.
I”m objecting to your word “distorted”, however, in the part of the sentence above “…reality captured by a camera versus the distorted perceptions of our minds.”
I don’t think our minds “distort” perception; if anything, they correct the problems that the tools create. But then, I’m a luddite at heart, if not in reality. And seeing what Steve can do with a camera, I have to accept some corrections in my thinking — as well, perhaps, of my thinking. But “distortions” of our mind’s perceptions — well, that’s like blaming the victim.
But no, alas, I can’t remember the post with the painting and photo side-by-side and since I don’t remember it, I can’t remember whether I still believe what I said. I was reading a review of a biography of Montaigne, in which the reviewer (and the biographer) note that Montaigne insisted (and sometimes demonstrated) that whatever he thought at this moment could be reversed at the next. Sometimes I think that about myself — when I can remember what I thought….
PS — I like the variations you’ve played out with your photos. They are startling in that they provide very different “feels” to the scene, with precisely the same elements showing. Extraordinary!
June,
What I meant by ‘distorted’ is the gorgeous full moon that I perceive rising above the firs in Northern Michigan compared to its far duller image captured by camera.
In my family, the car is called ‘my’ car because Troels only drives it in the summer, during the rest of the year, in Manhattan, he takes the subway. I agree, a car does not have to have paint splashed on its inside.
Re Montaigne, I enjoy the plasticity of my mind.
Birgit — the moon “illusion” isn’t an distortion; it’s a perception shared by at least 90% of the population. Although when I think of it, I’m not sure the percentage that shares a perception is proof of its reality.
But I do think that we should keep open the thought that the distortion is in the camera and not in ourselves. Particularly when it’s a gorgeous full moon. That’s reality. The camera’s pooh-pooh is just sour grapes.
Birgit:
There’s something nice about the 4×5 format – a fuller expression of the sky. Makes me wonder about the golden section as an aperture. It’s a ratio of choice in design work, but as a window?
Another little mind wondering on a Sunday morn: will a quarter moon appear enlarged upon the horizon? Or does it have to be full? Big red moons rising in the east used to fill me with dread. The minister would declare from his pulpit that the end of the world was to feature a moon turned to blood (if I’m remembering), and I couldn’t understand why folks could be calmly lining up their putt-putts with that thing coming up behind them. They should have been on their knees praying for a final absolution or running for whatever exit they could find.
So often the camera doesn’t create a reality for me, but instead confirms an impression. Yesterday it was Leon working on a ladder and I got one of those wham moments where things fit into the template that I’ve talked about. Don’t move a muscle Leon, as I go for my camera. The resulting image allowed me to examine at leisure what I had taken in haste.
Jay,
You are an angel! I had promised myself to use up all the wood panels that I had bought before ordering new ones. But I almost succumbed to the temptation of ordering a golden ratio panel. I do have two 16 x 20 panels one of which I will use to practice painting serenity in this beach motif using a 4 x 5 ratio. The lesson that I draw from this discussion is that the dimensions of a painting are dictated by the motif.
I feel like a kid with a new chemistry set because I recently outfitted myself generously with all kinds of new oil paints to experiment what works for me. This morning, I opened my new cobalt green (Co2TiO4 , Cobalt Titanium oxide, PG50) and I love it. Mixed with my also new Scheveningen Yellow Lemon (PY3 Hansa Yellow 10G), it gave just the right hue for the water hitting the sand in my most recent wave study. Yesterday, I had under painted the sand using my brand new Turner yellow mixed with Italian Earth and Zinc White. For an older picture, also today, I mixed a pinkish sand color using my new ultramarine pink, a touch of raw sienna and zinc white. All these dazzling pigments!
Children are impressionable. I had a similar feeling after I had read a legend about a certain sky color presages an Earth catastrophe. – I will check on the moon rising above the firs in when I get back to northern Michigan.
I, too, am wedded to my camera because of action shots – waves, Max running down the Dune Climb, Sam battling the waves on his boogie board, clouds drifting over the dunes.
Birgit:
I almost froze my eleven-year-old butt off in the water that hits the sand at Scheveningen. The lemon yellow might describe the sand – that’s beyond my recollection- but a nice cobalt blue would better describe my then-immersed self.
But the earth is not scheduled to end in Northern Michigan.
Did you say ultramarine pink? That funky!
Jay,
Ultramarine Pink has been made from a polysulfide of sodium, potassium, lithium, or silver and aluminosilicate. It is a low strength bluish pink that has been used for cosmetics. Since I don’t use cosmetics, I thought that it would be funky to paint with it.
Searching for Scheveningen on Wikipedia to find out what and where it is, reminded me that I had attended a banquet on its pier. I enjoy remembering the people that I talked to that evening. I don’t enjoy the memory of walking along the beach outside The Hague and seeing the concrete fortification from WWII.
Birgit:
Are those fortifications still there? The submarine pens were pockmarked slabs. They’ll likely outlast that whole area of the Netherlands. I can also recall rows of concrete spikes somewhere on the German border, erected to deter tanks. And then all the damage still existing in ’53 in the vicinity of the Battle of the Bulge.
Jay,
Fortification may have been the wrong term. What I remember is concrete things build into the dunes. I imagined soldier shooting out of them, protecting the beaches against invasion.
I did not see submarine pens in Holland. But as a child I swam in bombed out submarine pens in Wilhelmshaven, a WWII submarine base. Now, all that area in WHV is again inaccessible to civilians as military area. My gmail signature says: NATO out of Afghanistan. I am not hot on warfare.
Birgit:
Gee, I wonder why? The closest I came to danger was when I set something on fire with one of those blackout candles. The living room would be rather flickering and somewhat livid with the light of those candles and the Red Skelton Show was playing on the radio. I thought they were saying “Red Skeleton”, so the whole thing was a bit of off-season Halloween. Funny how you were the enemy over there.
Uncle Harold Hess was in training to be a bombardier as the war ended. Had he been sent over to the European Theater, there’s a chance that he could have blasted or been blasted by some relative.
One of my heroes, Chuck Yaeger, most likely dropped bombs on my home town. Fortunately, civilians were safe in air raid shelters with immensely thick walls.
Oops, with so many new oil colors, I confused ‘cobalt green’ with ‘cobalt green deep’ . The cool green of these oxides of cobalt and chromium [Co(Al,Cr)2O4)] is lovely.
Birgit:
Chuck didn’t drop them, but as a P-51 pilot escorting bombers, he was certainly an enabler.