American illustrator Austin Briggs (1908-1973) says: "When working out an idea for an illustration, it is essential to keep in mind the shape of the finished painting at all times. Otherwise you are likely to develop a composition that simply won't fit the picture space."
"I sketched the idea with great satisfaction, thinking I had the answer to the picture problem."
"When it came to working out the rough, however, I soon realized that this idea could not be made to conform to space requirements. It was very difficult for me to get this approach out of my head and find a design that would work. If I had kept the shape of the picture in mind from the start, I would have discarded this idea before I became too attached to it."
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From Austin Briggs' Master Course from the Famous Artists Course
, 1952
, 1952
Austin Briggs on Wikipedia
Thanks, Matt Dicke
3 comments:
Welcome. Glad those scans are coming in handy. FYI Manuel Auad is working on a Briggs art book as we speek.
Damn, this post messed with my head! Very important advice, and great example - such a great example, in fact, that I had the weirdest mental dissonance for a minute or two:
At first glance, both images seemed like almost exactly the same composition of the same scene. Then I started looking back and forth between them to identify the differences - but when I looked back to the top image to examine it, I couldn't imagine how an artist could fit that scene into a portrait-oriented canvas. Then I looked back to the bottom image and found myself unable to imagine how anyone could fit it into a landscape-oriented canvas. Took me a little while to figure out some of the changes that Briggs used to accomplish this:
- adding the house with another group of watching people from the top storey - making the house and its increased height part of the scene
- angling the falling man's body downwards
- shifting the falling man further down relative to the watchers on the docks
- slightly compressing the group of watchers
Man that's interesting!
Just a few days ago, on the 13th, the topic had been:
"painting a person doing a real action, rather than holding an artificial pose"...
The pottering figure on the 13th almost looks like a motionless still life, compared to the chap here flung into the pond.
Instantaneously.
And how Briggs altered the figure from the preliminary sketch (drawn within a few seconds?) to the final product.
How amazing!
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