“Landscape Painter’s Workbook” Preview: Movement in Composition with Bill Cone, Cindy Baron, and Mitchell Albala

This is the second of a 3-part series highlighting some of the painters featured in my new book, The Landscape Painter’s Workbook: Essential Studies in Shape, Composition, and Color.

Also see these previews:

• Shape Interpretation with Hester Berry, Sue Charles, and Carolyn Lord
• Color Strategies with Carol Strock Wasson and David Mensing
• VIDEO: Special Book Launch Event
• Excerpt: Active Negative Space in Landscape Painting

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The Landscape Painter’s Workbook covers three aspects of composition: variation and differences, movement, and active negative space. In this blog post, we’ll take a closer look at movement with painters Bill Cone, Cindy Baron, and yours truly. (For more on active negative space, see Excerpt: Active Negative Space in Landscape Painting.)

Movement is what animates a composition and brings it to life. Our eye remains active and engaged as it moves around and through the picture. Only a blank painting surface, absent of any mark or shape, would have no movement at all. As soon as we add shapes and colors and lines, however, our eye naturally begins to find pathways and seek connections between elements. Movement in landscape painting may be fast or slow, strong or gentle, steady or halting, but it is always desirable.

Direct and implied movement
The most common generators of movement are lines, the visible pathways that fall along the edges of picture elements. Our eye glides along the mountain’s edge or follows the arc of a tree limb. It follows the bend of the river or flies up a rock face. This is called direct movement. Less obvious, but of equal importance, is implied movement. Implied movement doesn’t follow visible contours or edges, but is created as the eye makes connections between different spots within the picture, in a connect-the-dots fashion.

Bill Cone

Bill Cone is a pastel painter based in California. I can feel the intentionality of his compositions, yet they always look natural and organic. He often surprises, with unusual vantage points and arrangements of shapes.

See more of Bill’s work at billcone.blogspot.com.

Cone often works within a square format. Unlike the horizontal or vertical format, which imparts its own directional energy to the composition, the square tends to exert a uniform pressure on all sides. To suggest movement, therefore, a painter must rely entirely on the internal elements of the composition.

What is intriguing about Neighborhood is how the strong verticality of the trees (A) do not lead our our eye out of the picture at the top. Cone cleverly uses the contour of the hilltop as a kind of cap to hold our eye within the picture (B). Also note how the vertical movement of the trees is counteracted by the diagonal patterns of snow on the hill (C). Although the upward thrust of the trees are the dominant movement in the painting, they are not the only direction of movement.

Cindy Baron

One of the hallmarks of a great composition is that it never feels forced. We sense the “rightness” of the composition, although we may not always be aware of the subtle ways in which the painter in is guiding our eye.

The large diagonal created by the hillside is clearly the strongest movement within the picture. Imagine for a moment the painting without the rocks on the right side. We would still be drawn back into the space, toward the top, but there would be no means of bringing our eye back into the picture. We enter the picture in the lower right, travel up the diagonal on the left side (A), and then move across the top of the picture along the distant rocks and the horizon line (B). These direct pathways are indicated by solid lines. Then, through indirect movement, the eye hops from rock to rock and along the waves, bringing us back into the composition on the right side.

See more of Cindy’s work at her website: cindybaron.com.

Mitchell Albala

Movement is particularly important in a composition as subtle and atmospheric as Ballard Bridge to Shilshole. Simplicity is of great interest to me, but I never want the composition to be boring. I want the viewer’s eye to remain engaged as it moves around the composition.

At the bottom, along the ground plane, an implied circular movement is formed as our eye follows the small patches of water in a connect-the-dots” fashion. A subtle diagonal in the lower right also leads our eye toward the center. Thus, our eye doesn’t just land on the ground plane and sit there; it has pathways to follow that keep our eye moving around the composition. More subtly, there is upward movement on either side. It was important to me that that the two large zones — the sky and the ground — felt integrated. Composition can help with this. On the left and right, I merge the values of the ground and the sky, which helps tie together the upper and lower portions of the composition. The sky and ground are not separate, and can function as integrated parts of the whole composition.

For additional examples of how composition works in these abstract, atmospheric landscapes, see the video below.