Thursday, September 17, 2015

Austin Briggs on Sketch to Finish


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."


"If you become too fond of an unworkable idea you may find it hard to start over on a new approach. The sketch above was sone quite spontaneously for a [Saturday Evening] Post cover. A momentary pose of the group suggested the compositional pattern—sort of a hammock design with the body suspended, so to speak, between the supporting figures at left and right."

"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
Austin Briggs on Wikipedia
Thanks, Matt Dicke
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3 comments:

  1. Matt DickeSeptember 17, 2015 at 4:11 PM

    Welcome. Glad those scans are coming in handy. FYI Manuel Auad is working on a Briggs art book as we speek.

    ReplyDelete
  2. CarmelSeptember 17, 2015 at 4:30 PM

    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

    ReplyDelete
  3. RichSeptember 17, 2015 at 6:19 PM

    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!

    ReplyDelete

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