Saturday, January 24, 2015

Thinking About Proportion (EBMC January - Part IV)

"Fence" (working title!) is quilted now.  When it came to applying the fence to the background, I confess I was sorely tempted to leave it like this:

;-)

But no...I bit the bullet, fused it in place and stitched it down with my walking foot and a subtly variegated thread (Superior's King Tut, colour #992).  Here it is on my design wall, trimmed, but not finished (I'm planning to do a facing):


Unfinished, it's currently 16.5" W x 17" L -- or not quite square.  So far I've opted to leave out any 'embellishment', in keeping with the clean, peaceful look of the piece.  (By 'embellishment', I mean hand stitching or thread painting of tufts of grass here and there; adding 'grain' to the wood of the fence -- and like that.)

The fence is not centred, but not very far off-centre, either.  I'm not sure I like it.  I got to thinking about the Golden Ratio in art, and what this would do to the piece.  If I kept the length and altered only the width, I'd have to narrow it significantly; it would end up 10" W x 16" long when finished.  That would put the fence right in the centre of the bottom of the piece -- totally out of whack!

Before doing any more mathematical gymnastics, I pondered the current sizes of stretched canvas that are available (though I'm in Canada, generally our canvases come from the US so they're in inches rather than centimetres).  Believe it or not, there's a blog post about that.  Even more informative was the author's related post which included a table of the required sizes in Europe (citing France as the authority -- with sizes recommended for 3 different types of paintings - figure, landscape and marine scape) as well as an analysis and rating of those most used for painting in the in the U.S.

And what was most interesting about the analysis?  The fact that the most popular sizes (most used for painting) in North America (the ones the author ranked with the most stars) had a ratio (one side to the other) of 0.75 to 0.80.  The Golden Ratio is 0.618.  The canvas sizes closest in proportion to the Golden Ratio (at 0.65 to 0.71) were the ones used more often for personal photos, art prints and photographic prints but not for painting.

Hmmmm...

So...what about my textile piece?  Not a painting, but not a photograph or print, either...Hopefully, though, a 'painterly' expression of a landscape in fabric....

Ideally, to keep the width at 16" I should have made it longer (20" instead of 17"), for a ratio of 0.80 -- but I didn't even start out that long, so forget that!  Sigh.

The next idea is to trim it on both sides, and reduce it to 11" W by 14" L...shown below by the magic of photo cropping...bringing the fence farther forward, and cutting out most of the sky...


Here are the two (almost) "side by each"...



Roughly 16" W x 16.5" L (finished)


Roughly 11" W x 14" L (finished)









































I confess that looking at them like this, the right-hand one is growing on me...but I might have to effect a compromise, so that I don't cut out so much sky.

Any ideas?  I have to have the thing faced and finished by month-end!

Now to link up to Nina Marie's Off the Wall Friday...and go and do some quiet, simple piecing.  My brain hurts!

7 comments:

Art by Rhoda Forbes said...

Love the clean clear space in this, it is wonderful. Brings to mind so many could be scenes.

Jenny K. Lyon said...

I prefer the 16" one-feels more balanced to me. A lovely, serene piece!

Wil said...

Why not go for 16"x16"? That way you do not have to cut off a lot of the sky and if you cut a bit of the left side, the fench will not be in the middle. Plus as a bonus there are canvases in that size -:).

elle said...

Boy, you sure have decisions to make! :O I kinda like the one on the right myself.

Teresa Duryea Wong said...

In addition to canvas sizes, your 11x14 in crops reminds fo something I often think ... and that is thata our brain gets stuck on traditional formats that were common to 35 mm film - the old 4x3 format. Much of what we are exposed to in video/film now is a 16x9 format. There is no reason art can't fit in a square, or even a circle. We just are more comfortable seeing a size we recognize. that is my two cents anyway. Your textile piece is beautiful!

Suzanne Ramsay said...

You asked for comments and I always have opinions... I really like the right hand one, the closer up one. It feels as if I am right there. The left hand one is calm, and it feels like a landscape. Depends on what you wish to evoke. In the moment or in the past.

California Fiber artist and composer said...

I like the 16" square even though it may not conform to the Golden mean. The format makes one look and then it gives a feeling of the isolation of the winter prairie.