I tended to look at the left side of the painting first. In the original example you gave upthread, with the theater on the left, I first saw the ceiling lights, and then only later saw the girl. In the flipped version you gave in the first example above, I saw the girl first. So which one was the original one, again? Girl on the right, or girl on the left?
I believe she said that Hopper put the girl on the right, so that one would be the original.
Are you left-handed?
I was taught that most people look from left to right, from lower left to upper right, actually, and that paintings, scenes in movies, and stage plays are created with that in mind.
the biker on the left looks like he is having the harder time.
the girl stands out on both because of the bright blue with Blonde hair combo for me, the theater is just a dark blob until you focus on it.
Damn, there is a Baroque painting of Judith and her maid killing Holofernes that illustrates this concept really well.
Ah, found it. It’s the Artemesia, not the Caravaggio like I thought. Baroque paintings are great for this stuff- your eye is drawn along the strong lines of heads-arms-head-blood to the bottom of the frame.
ETA- forgot to explain the line- starts at the maid’s head, comes down her and Holofernes’ arms to his head, then back up diagonally and to the right to Judith.
Interesting painting, BTW- allegedly painted after her sexual assault at the hands of her father’s male art students, as punishment for her audacity in wanting to study painting.
Now, on the subject of actually guiding your eyes, these are called image vectors. Vectors have a direction and magnitude, just like in physics.
For instance, pointing is a powerful index vector. It seems obvious, he’s pointing so we should look at the direct object, but it’s still just a picture. Yet, our eyes have been guided anyway.
Here are some strong graphic vectors. The vertical lines force our eyes to follow them up.
There are also motion vectors. The picture isn’t actually moving, but it feels like it is.
Finally, graphic weight is a huge one. I was looking for the image where there’s a red box in the center and then off to the side is that creepy guy, but I can’t remember where I’ve seen it. Any help?
Those seem obvious, but that’s really all there is to it. When people talk about how a painting moves your eyes around, generally it is some combination of the above. For instance, Calliebotte uses forced perspective and graphic vectors to force our eyes in Paris Street, Rainy Day.
You’ll also notice that in the background, near the horizon, is greyish blue. Physically speaking, red waves are some of the most energetic in the visible spectrum, so an object that’s farther away will have it’s red waves scattered about the universe before they get to us. So an artist can deemphasize an area by making it greyish blue, forcing it into the background.
I don’t want to get into it yet, but that painting is a classic example of the Golden Section. I think that’s what your wife was talking about. Go here to read about the golden sections.
Also, the Futurists were a modern art movement dedicated to motion. Motion vectors. Here’s an abstract example in sculpture , here’s a painting by the same dude.
Actually, not really. Studies indicate that it doesn’t really matter how you’re taught to read, write, etc, people generally see the right side of the screen as more important. That’s why you’ll see in most professional websites that the navigation bar is placed on the left side - the content should be the highlight, not the navigation.
Which one of the following seems like it is going uphill and which one appears to be going downhill?
That seems to be what I was taught: the “meat” of the thing is on the right.
#1, I look from lower left to upper right, going uphill, quite naturally.
#2, Upper left to lower right, going downhill. Still left to right, right as “destination”.
No, I’m right-handed.
Well, the science fairies are doing me no favors. There goes my hypothesis…
I’ve always heard the phrase “leading lines.” They don’t have to be straight lines, but they frame or point to the focus of the image. Ansel Adams was a-frickin-mazing at using them.
Print is one thing - we read from the top to the bottom, and from the left to the right (in this culture, anyway).
In pictures, it’s a tad different. Imagine taking a picture, superimposing a tic-tac-toe board on it, and numbering the intersections bottom right, top right, top left, bottom left, with 1-2-3-4, respectively. These are the “focal points” of the picture. The importance of the 1 and 2 spots can change with the kind of subject. This is called the Rule of Thirds. (Placing the center of the eyes of your subject at or near the #2 spot is a good way of making a portrait “pop”. But placing the focal point of an object there may “lead” you to it - with or without leading lines.)
Anyone who reads Japanese comic books is aware of some of this. When manga first started being translated for the American market the publishers flipped all the artwork so they would read left-to-right the way American comic books do. The probably was that is screwed up all the compositions. Now translated manga keep their original layout and read right-to-left – they even have warnings on their “back” covers telling new readers to start at the other end.
When I was studying photography, years ago, I was taught about the “golden triangle.” Here was the first link I found regarding it, but I was kind of in a hurry so there may be better links.
Well, at the risk of turning poor Cisco’s stomach, let’s consider a couple of things to think about not where your eye is “forced” but how compositional choices affect a sense of motion or not motion, and where attention can be focussed and trajectories suggested via color or light or compositional choices (God, that sounds pedantic!)
Exhibit A: Rubens’ not-quite-a-Crucifixion in Antwerp Cathedral
versus, around the same period but with different intentions, Exhibit B, one of Ter Brugghen’s Crucifixions.
Ter Brugghen–something static, iconic, monolithic and unchanging about the way things are set, large in the frame, few figures, a lot of horizontals and verticals. It doesn’t want to look like it’s headed anywhere. This is a moment that could continue indefinitely. Bright and interesting colors distributed throughout-- your eye is pretty free to wander but won’t feel like straying far or quickly. However, the gazes of the two side figures help focus us on the center person of interest (we tend to look where figures are looking, to see what’s so interesting), as does the light point in the center.
Rubens-- a very heavy diagonal, that encourages your attention either from the front right of the central panel back into fictive space, or from the rear left of that panel down rightwards. The most central and most brightly lit areas form a set of diagonals-- JC’s body,but also picked up by the titulus and by the arm muscles of the guy in front. And consider the arrangement of the figures on the left panel-- conscious decisions to stick them there,a sort of backwards C-curve that at the same time seems to recede into space. There are any number of other things that you could pay attention to in time, but there’s an overall effect that’s being worked toward. The first 5 seconds of your experience tend towards something, just in sudden first reaction to light and color.
In terms of this Baroque use of the diagonal, check out Exhibit C, Rubens’ Descent from the Cross. Where does your eye head first? My prediction is (I could be wrong! Sorry Cisco!) is either the humongous blindingly white area, or the red cloak. Then due to the diagonal composition your eye might head off towards the group of figures to the lower left, or up to the brightly-lit areas of the guys at the top of the cross. The figures in this piece are all technically arranged as a big rectangular stack, but that’s not the overall effect, because of the lighting choices, so he manages to defeat the sense of static-ness that a rectilinear arrangement would usually have.
I personally think a lot of compositional “rules” are nonsense. Everyone is different, and they’re not necessarily going to do whatever it is you have mathematically determined in your image. Some people are just going to do something unpredictable and mess you around.
Composition is a subtle and instinctive art, and shouldn’t be dwelled on too much. If you study it too hard you lose the instinct, and the image becomes mechanical and forced.
Stick with the more obvious rules:
The rule of thirds is a good one, or at least don’t divide an image exactly in half.
Tonal differences - a dark spot in a bright image, or a bright spot in a dark image will draw the eye.
The edges of an image are not good places to put the objects of interest, keep them towards the centre.
Beyond that, any expectations are really just hopes. Angles and lines and colours to draw the eye into different places in a particular order? Nonsense. People will do whatever they want, and you can’t guide them in any specific way after their first look.
That is actually quite backwards. Blue light is the most energetic in the visible spectrum.
From the OP:
There have been many studies on Gaze. One of the most famous workers in this field was Alfred Iarbus (or Yarbus or Jarbus. Transliteration is fun), a Russian whose book Eye Movements and Vision shows pictures and traces the movements of viewers’ eyes as they look at it. He included at least one painting in his booki, but it’s not a very well-known one.
Here’s a Wiki page on hiim:
Despite what it says, Iarbus did NOT pioneer the study of saccadic eye movements – there were people doing it decades before him, but he was a heavy and thorough investigator. I’ve seen other work on this, with one depiction of Hokusai’s print The Great Wave and superimposed saccadic movements. I’m not familiar with any attempt, howeverm to correlate such sccadic eye movement studies with the claims of artiosts and critics about how art is supposed to guide the eye. I wouldn’t be surprised if they exist, though.