Composition

Following on from one of our previous lectures about composition and form, I thought I would analsye some paintings and apply some of the theories to them.

In this lecture we were shown this picture.

This painting conforms to the 'Rule of Thirds'  (nine equal parts by two equally-spaced horizontal lines and two equally-spaced vertical lines) shown below.

The image is separated by the foreground (forest), the subject matter (buildings) and the background (mountains). Other separations are present though, namely the tones and colours used in each section. The foreground uses dark tones, subject warmer colours and background uses washed out blues and colder tones. The eye is drawn to the subject matter.

One of the posted clips on blackboard Ways of Seeing, had a painting by Caravaggio. I remembered a recent documentary I watch about his life, and started to look on the Internet at other Paintings by him.
I started to notice a pattern in his works.

He uses diagonal right angle lines a lot in his work to construct a subtle impression of symmetry.
(Update: further research shows that I stumbled upon a form technique called the 'Golden Triangle/Ratio' which would take another blog in its self to explain. Interesting though.)

(this painting always made me feel uncomfortable, mostly that due to the fact I thought the fruit bowl would be falling off the table at any moment. Im guessing that its a symbol for the precariousness of the life of Jesus at that time)

Caravaggio uses light and dark contrast to bring his subject matter to the front of view, hiding most of the background in darkness. Some may say that that reflected his life style, but I would say it just provides a striking, sharp, beautiful but always sinister mood to all of his Art.