Saturday, April 12, 2008

Clustering in Landscape

A few months ago, I suggested the concept of clustering. As you recall, in a scene with a lot of figures, it helps to bunch some of them together, leaving other parts of the picture relatively empty.

The idea of clustering also applies to other design elements, too. This landscape by Emilio Sanchez-Perrier gains much of its compositional interest from the fascinating tangle of trunks and branches in its center.

If you look closely, there’s even man visible through the cluster of branches, and we see why the woman on the bank is gazing in that direction.

Such complexity attracts the eye, which loves to untie knots. But empty areas in other parts of the picture are essential to give the eye a welcome rest.

Previous post on clustering, link.
More at ARC on Sanchez-Perrier, link.

4 comments:

David Bernal said...

LOoove your blog!! every single post is Wonderful!!!
Thnaks! great examples and very inspiring :)

jeff said...

Great post, and thank you for introducing me to a great landscape painter. Sanchez-Perrier is an amazing artist.

His work reminds me Peder Monsted's and many other landscape painters of this caliber.

It's great to start the day with a new painter to check out.

Edgar Payne's book Composition of Outdoor Painting is a good for people who wish learn more about this subject.

Erik Bongers said...

I must say, when it comes to drawing every twig one by one, this painting isn't that far from Leighton's lemon tree drawing of of few posts back.

Victor said...

Wow this guy paints trees incredibly! Usually, I get a little annoyed with "tight" landscape painters like some of the Hudson River school because even though their work looks fantastic and realistic from a distance, when you move in closer you can see that some foliage was "drawn" as opposed to painted, resulting in overly hard edges, or that they got sort of generic and stylized with leaves like the Rococo artists did.

Sanchez-Perrier seems to mass foliage together more and leave more soft edges while still retaining a sense of specificity and authentic texture that many looser painters don't have.