“You do not want people leaving your painting.
You want them to enter your painting, stay there until they buy it.”
—Tim Tyler
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In the episode of The FASO Show that aired live on June 18th, Timothy Tyler reveals The Hidden Geometry of Great Paintings. Timothy reveals how Sargent, Sorolla, and other masters use composition, movement, and “stoppers” to hold the viewer’s eye.
In this episode you’ll learn:
Why Some Paintings Hold Your Eye
The Lost Art of Composition
What Sargent and Sorolla Knew About Composition
The Secret Architecture of a Master Painting
How Great Painters Guide the Eye
The Composition Trick You’ll Never Unsee
Why Your Eye Stays in a Great Painting
The Invisible Design Behind Great Art
How Sargent and Sorolla Keep You Looking
Composition Secrets from Sargent, Sorolla, and the Masters
Timothy Tyler was our latest guest on The FASO Show program. He shares “The Power of Composition: Lessons from Sargent and Sorolla”. As a paid subscriber, we are happy to provide not only the video replay but the full transcript of the insightful session with Timothy below. Please keep in mind the transcripts are generated by AI so there may be some typos.
Creatively,
Clint Watson
FASOFounder & Creativity Fanatic
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Transcript:
The Power of Composition: Lessons from Sargent and Sorolla with Tim Tyler
Olya Konell 00:00
Welcome, officially, my name is Olya, and this is The FASO Show. This is where we bring on various FASO artists to teach you, to talk to you, to answer your questions, because we don’t claim to be the experts. We like to bring the experts on, and you know, there’s.. it’s not just art, and it’s not just marketing here. We talk about art as well, because you can’t market your art if your art isn’t that marketable yet, right? So it’s really important, and today’s conversation is actually going to dive into that. We’re going to be talking, and I’m going to show him here on camera with Tim Tyler. He is one. He’s a very accomplished artist. You can just look behind him and see the beautiful work hanging on his walls, he’s very passionate about composition, and I’m actually looking, I’m an artist too, but I would say I’m a fleshling, I’m a young artist in my journey, I’m kind of doing it for fun, occasionally take on commissions, you know, it’s definitely something that I’m tinkering on in the background, because at some point in my life that’s going to be what I’ll devote my life to. So I am looking forward to learning from Tim today. I, you know, this whole presentation is brought to you by FASO, FASO.com. FASO is a service for artists to make their own websites. It’s a very plug and play type of system, and one of the things that we’re going to actually plug, instead of our own links, I’m going to share with you Tim’s affiliate link, Tim, and I’ll share this with you later as well. If you know anyone that wants a website for $99 for the first year, you can use Tim’s link. The credit goes to Tim. We like to support our artists, so what you know, take a take advantage of that. It’s a really good deal, and we like to think we have the best deals, actually.
Tim Tyler 01:49
When it working years,
Olya Konell 01:51
yeah, yeah, we like to think that the amount of pain that FASO goes through, you know, to try to keep things, you know, as low as possible for our artists, because we understand that, you know, being an artist is not easy, and we like to make it, you know, as easy as possible. So I’m going to share all of Tim links as well in the very beginning here, and one of the things I would like to highlight, and I’m just going to grab one. So, this is our website, FASO.com I have already shared Tim’s link. You can find it there. One of the things that we’re going to have, if you have to leave early during the presentation at any time, and if you’re not a FASO customer, FASO artist, that’s okay, you can just be an artist, and you can catch the recording later. So, watch the recording, it will be sent to you via email, but it is on our newsletter sub stack, so you can actually go to the bull. There’s a button up top for show, and right up top you can view all of the recordings that we’ve had, so definitely check them out. There’s some really good conversations, but anyway, so that’s all I wanted to share. I’m going to go ahead and bring Tim back on, and what I would, what I would like to introduce, this is a lesson. This is going to be lessons in composition. You will have an opportunity to ask Tim questions throughout the conversation. I’m going to be fielding those to Tim, so if he’s saying something and you’re like, ‘Wait, I didn’t understand that, and he’s already jumped on to the next topic, put it in the Q and A box, because you know, I’ll gently interrupt him, or I’ll, you know, kind of wave, like we actually have a quick question here from so and so, and we’re going to plug that so he can answer it. Feel free to take notes, and he, we’re going to have images on screen that I will be sharing that you know are going to illustrate what he’s talking about, because you can’t really learn about composition without seeing examples, and then in the recording we’re going to include all of these images, and actually I’m going to pull them in closer, so if you have a hard time seeing something, you know, just keep off the FASO link is not working. If you have a hard time seeing something, I’m going to make sure you’ll be able to look at it later in more detail and close on, and then also something I like to do, you know, before you dive into the talk that you’ve prepared for us, I would love to hear just a very brief, like, if somebody’s never heard of you, they’ve never seen your work, give us just a brief description about who you are and what you do, and then I’ll, we’ll take it from there.
Tim Tyler 04:45
Although I’m almost strictly an oil painter now, I used to do bronzes 40 years ago, but I stopped doing bronzes, and I draw just as a prerequisite to painting. And I did a little watercolor, those were very good, so I just focus on oil painting, but I do, I paint everything, I paint, I even paint abstracts now, but still eyes, portraits, figures, landscapes, you know, seascapes, I’ve kind of, I’ve kind of come to the point where I do all of it, and I show in galleries and museums and exhibits. Been did it for 52 years, so I have some history, and I read a lot, and go to museums, and I like history, and I like to like to read, so
Olya Konell 05:41
yeah, I can
Tim Tyler 05:42
convey some of that today to you, and I really love good questions, and the images that you’re going to show, I hope will provoke conversations about many aspects of composition. It’s very hard to find a good book on composition, I found, and so maybe I can point out some things that people have not seen before,
Olya Konell 06:06
yeah, and and I will say one of the beautiful things you were talking about, a trip you had recently, one of the beautiful things about reading, seeing, experiencing is I like to call it gathering inspiration, because the word inspiration is a very unique one, to, in to inspire, to breathe in before we can breathe out, so you know, I, I hope that today’s conversation and today’s talk will bring the, you know, the audience some inspiration. Peggy says, “Can you speak a little bit louder? I will adjust Tim’s audio in the recording for anyone that has difficulty, and try turning up your volume as much as possible. And then, Tim, do you.. I was gonna say, you do have a very soft voice, and you have a microphone, so
Tim Tyler 06:55
hope it’s working.
Olya Konell 06:57
Yeah, it’s working. I can hear you. I mean, I think it’s working. I can hear you great, so we’ll just keep that in mind, that if it gets too quiet. Perfect. Sorry, appreciate it, you guys. And we’ll do our best, like I said in the recording. I have, I can push buttons, and I can make things louder and clear, and all that fun stuff, but yeah, no, I’m excited to hear about, yeah, because you, you are right, and in our promotional video that we shared, I used a clip from the podcast recording where you talked about how composition is almost like a lost art, and back in the day, even collectors had a greater, you know, understanding. They could talk about it, it, you know, they could discuss it, you know. They, so, you know, that is a really good point. And I think artists are the only ones really focusing on it, because we’re the ones, you know, you know, we have to create the work, but I think that in today’s world, what I would like, you know, for you to kind of cover is in today’s world, there’s a lot of artists that may not have gone the traditional route of education of going into an art academy, you know, so a lot of artists are somewhat maybe start out self-taught, but then they’ll go take workshops from other artists, and you know they’re the learning never ends for us as artists, I think, but because they’re, you know, they’re going into it through these other routes due to the power of the internet, I think having these talks and these topics covered and making them accessible is so important, because they might not have been exposed to a good composition lesson. So, anyway, I’m going to let you take the floor, like I said. I’m going to make myself small, and I’m just going to, I’m going to be in charge of making sure I have the images on the screen.
Tim Tyler 08:57
Excellent, mr. Sorolla. So, this is going to be Soraya and Sargent, mostly a few other people tossed in, but I wish I had one of those little pointers, but I can, I can do it audibly or verbally, you see. You see that sale, how that sale goes from left to right, and then it picks up that figure over at the far side that’s leaning back into the composition that’s all very purposeful, and I think there are several examples of Sorolla here where he has those big strong sails, which are just arrows, really, and a lot of times they come from left to right, but they’re always terminate, there’s a stopper, there’s a sergeant version, we’re going to show that shows the stopper in, in perfect example, the because, because we in the Western Hemisphere read from left to right, people read paintings from left to right, and the Sorollo is a perfect example, you read from. Left to right, and because he knows that he wants to arrest that locomotion, we call it that zoom outward from the painting, and this is another example. If you look at the upper upper right side of almost every painting, that upper right corner is just boring, because you don’t want somebody to linger up in that left upper upper right corner, you don’t want them to linger up there. They start in from the left, and there’s often a lot of energy on that left edge, and you’ll see it in my still life, some things where I’ll break that left edge to allow a point of entry, but just the opposite is true on the right side. You do not want them exiting, but because we read from left to right, there’s a propensity to do that. So visual artists, some of them, I don’t even know if they do it on purpose, but they should, because it’s, it’s integral, and you see it all the time. But the sorority is one good start, but you know, although this is a good one here, this is a sergeant, I believe this is unusual, Sergeant, but so what’s interesting about this one, people talk about the golden mean and all these different things, but this is example, and there’s several other examples by Sergeant Ansaroya, and if you take the height of the painting and rotate it straight down, that’s where that figure is placed. In other words, if you take the square and rotate it horizontally, that figure is exactly that distance over. That’s the perfect place for a figure. But even in this painting, you see the figure serves as a stopper. You read from left to right, and the figure is your stopper. This is, this is a very unusual sergeant, but if you look at the same thing happens exactly where, if you take the height of the painting and rotate it horizontally, that’s where the tree is. This is nice, because these aren’t any particular order, so they’ll stimulate conversation as I see them,
Olya Konell 12:03
yeah. And you know, it’s an interesting thing that you pointed out. I had no idea about the left to right thing. I mean, I guess you’re 100% right there, because I catch myself doing that too, as I click and look at a new painting, that is literally what my eyes are doing
Tim Tyler 12:22
once she listens in, and you can’t. Yeah, here’s an example, right there. This is one of my paintings, but you see that bright wedge at the bottom of the painting, it curves up and meets that other bright ledge that comes down, and that portion had this been a rectangular painting, that portion would have rotated down into that golden mean, which is all the interest and everything is where those two elastically several lines converge there on the golden mean, and all that’s quite purposeful and deliberate, and it just feels balanced because we really do leap, we read from left to right, we just do, and Sargent was especially aware of that, even when he was young, when he was 17 to 25 He really pushed the boundaries, like with El Hileo and several other Sargent paintings. You can just see him really pushing that knowledge of left to right, it’s asymmetric balance, is what it
Olya Konell 13:26
is, but
Tim Tyler 13:26
being cognitive of the word locomotion from left to right, and you mentioned not having heard of that, I have students that take 15 workshops a year from really good people, and I’ll mention this locomotion thing, and I said no one’s ever told me that, so I thought, oh, this is interesting. So,
Olya Konell 13:47
yeah, and I’m going to go ahead, and actually I’m going to do something, not because I’m removing you from the screen, but I’m going to make the paintings bigger. When we do the recording, you’re going to be on camera as well, but just for the sake of the live presentation, I’m tweaking it a little bit, just to make it easier for folks to actually see much
Tim Tyler 14:06
better now.
Olya Konell 14:07
Yeah, so, and I don’t, I don’t even need to be in there, I can.
Tim Tyler 14:13
It’s really more important,
Olya Konell 14:15
I
Tim Tyler 14:16
don’t care about myself, but I just want to composition and design, so this is very, very handy.
Olya Konell 14:22
Yeah, and so all right, so I’m gonna grab, yeah, and it’s interesting, yeah, a lot of.. I can see why a lot of students don’t know that. I can see that being a common mistake when we’re setting something up, even if we’re painting a still life, you know, keeping that in mind can help us set up our, you know, just set everything up the way that we want it to play out, but
Tim Tyler 14:48
and it becomes instinctual. This is an example of Sargent people like Sargent for a lot of reasons, but they almost never talk about his compositional skills. With the bought daughters is one example, but for example, here, if you remove that one little petal on the far right side, the balance of the painting doesn’t quite work. That one little petal is just enough to counterbalance it’s perfect asymmetric, but again, here, if you take the height of painting, rotate it down, that’s where those figures dissect, that’s exactly the golden mean.
Olya Konell 15:24
Yeah,
Tim Tyler 15:25
it happened. It will see it over and over again. You can just continue to show paintings, and I’ll just pick up aspects of each. Okay, this is an interesting one. Okay, so this Sorolla again was aware of the left to right motion, and a lot of his sails do that left to right thing, and this one, because of the line of the ocean, is extremely powerful left to right, but he changed the sky, he brought in that pink gray part of the sky to diminish that left to right motion, so that the sails on the right side are far less important than the big white sail on the left side, and if you look at the left edge of the painting, he’s, he’s punctured, he’s broken that edge to allow you into the painting with that big sail, but on the other side, he’s created distractions, there’s a little figure there, and there’s some stuff in the horizon, but he brought in that big pink cloud, and I think I did another version with where he, without the peak, there. Okay, there he
Olya Konell 16:28
got very
Tim Tyler 16:29
deliberate, and how powerful that is. Now he was aware of that, so he brought in that pink cloud to arrest that locomotion. Otherwise, you just blow straight out the painting.
Olya Konell 16:40
Yeah, Joe says it looks like a big arrowhead. And an interesting comment I saw, I have somebody saying that they used to live in Japan, and the Japanese read right to left, and that’s how I learned that. And then somebody was saying, I have the same question, even though I’m from Amsterdam, Holland, and Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan are right to left. Do you find any? Do you do you think it’s because of how we read, Tim, that that we’ve, you know, our eyes do that? Do you think other areas where they read right to left, the art has been influenced? What are your thoughts,
Tim Tyler 17:21
things, so I have a hard time personally relating to Eastern art, because I think there is that bias that we’re built in. Look at some Eastern art, you read from left to right, it doesn’t really work, it isn’t important, and it’s more, it’s more symmetrically balanced, and there’s far less locomotion that I can discern, so I think it’s learned. If you ask if somebody, for example, if somebody were illiterate, this probably wouldn’t be a thing. So I think as we learn to read from left to right, it just gets burned into our mind.
Olya Konell 17:55
Yeah, yeah. And Betsy was saying the same thing. Some languages, same as Arabic, yeah. So that is interesting. I’m gonna actually, I’m gonna have to pay attention to that. I would love to find some artists from those other regions and kind of see the impact. And Carol says that sometimes it can be difficult for Westerners because it’s a little bit more flat, just a different style, so yeah, interesting. Okay, but and I’ll go on to the next one. Sorry. Oh, this is beautiful.
Tim Tyler 18:30
I just love these stimulus of these paintings. Okay, here, so this sorority again, so it comes in left to right, and he breaks that left side, so he comes in and see this sail sweeps you right into those people, he did that on purpose, and he sweeps you right into those two figures on those oxen, and it’s really high contrast, that one figure just extremely high contrast, but there is nothing going on on the right side, that’s that famously boring site where you do not want people to exit your painting. Some guy years ago said that you want to bring somebody into your painting, take them for a little journey, and then take them out of your painting. You do not want people leaving your painting, you want them to enter your painting, stay there until they buy
Olya Konell 19:16
it. I like that. Yeah, you know, something that caught my attention, I was like, are they riding horses? Because I see the cows facing at me, are they riding them backwards?
Tim Tyler 19:27
Yeah, I think they’re just those big oxen that they use to move the boats, and
Olya Konell 19:31
oh, I see, I see, that makes sense, they’re making the oxen pole. Oh, interesting.
Tim Tyler 19:38
Okay, see, this is a perfect example where they sort of come in, you read them in, that’s okay from left to right, but that steel allows you to exit the canvas. This, by the way, is opposite. We, we flip some of these just to point, but this really makes the point where you just go push right out of the composition.
Olya Konell 19:56
I, that’s fascinating. Do you guys, do you guys. That, so you enter in, you know, from left to right, and then you’re kind of stuck in the center on this one. I flew out of there pretty quickly.
Tim Tyler 20:09
Exactly.
Olya Konell 20:10
Wow, that is so fascinating. Okay, that’s fascinating. That’s just really cool.
Tim Tyler 20:19
This is another Sorolla Simmons, or the version before, but you see the sale comes in
Olya Konell 20:23
and the sale
Tim Tyler 20:24
picks up that boy and it retains you within. It’s almost like it’s almost like an ellipse, you see, it’s elliptical comes in and he retains you within the painting.
Olya Konell 20:36
Yeah, that’s fascinating. I had several people in the chat saying, “Wow, who knew?
Tim Tyler 20:41
I had heard that, and when I teach class, I’ve heard that a lot, and
Olya Konell 20:45
yeah,
Tim Tyler 20:46
lost things. Okay, this is kind of fun. This, this is a Venice. I just got back from Venice. This is a painting Sargent did. This is like the second or third version, but there’s an earlier version that’s the Rialto Bridge. There’s another version where it’s devoid of the people, but Sergeant, when he first painted, he said this is just too good of a placement, so he put the figure in that funnel of the Rialto Bridge, but see that line, that line is just overt, where it brings you into that figure, that’s just kind of heavy handled for Sargent, he’s usually more delicate than that, but that’s just a stream pushes you right down into that white figure.
Olya Konell 21:27
Yeah, and it’s definitely more defined, and then you know your eyes are drawn towards the gentleman with resting on the cabbages, so
Tim Tyler 21:39
even interrupts the end of the gondola, it’s not a linear break, he keeps the gondola within the composition.
Olya Konell 21:46
Yeah, a question from somebody we have in the audience, How do these concepts align with guiding the eye, not just to stay, but to settle on the right status?
Tim Tyler 21:58
Well, it’s all done very purposely, you decide what your focal point wants to be, and in my opinion, you do everything you can to accentuate the focal point. Sometimes, when a painting is sort of pleasant, but it doesn’t really impact you, it often lacks a focal point, and there could be a focal point and counterbalance, and you know, one big thing is several small things, but there still should be one focal point, and a lot of times it’s the highest contrast. For example, that gondolier that’s standing up, that’s a white gondolier on a white clothing on a black gondolier, and that’s a high contrast place, that’s another way to establish a focal point,
Olya Konell 22:43
and
Tim Tyler 22:44
because every painting you’re going to show is a good painting by an old, old dead guy. There’s this wonderful example. Okay, this is another one. This is Lake Garda by Sargent, and so you see, Sargent brings you in from the left. This was actually he rented a boat, and he went out of the lake, and he sat there, and he painted back, looking at this, and so you come in from the left, that’s quite natural, and then you swirl around, but there’s enough going on on the edge on the right that you don’t vacate, you stay within there, and it hadn’t been, wish I could point, but there’s a clutter down below the stones that kind of arrest that are right in there. Yeah, it arrests the, they want to exit, and then we have another version of it flipped, I think that will show you how important the left to right
Olya Konell 23:37
is.
Tim Tyler 23:38
No, that’s that’s okay, that’s the correct one,
Olya Konell 23:42
that’s the, yeah, well, that’s the one we were just looking at, and then the next one in, I don’t think I had a flipped one Cirque. This is
Tim Tyler 23:48
the rehearsal of the orchestra in Paris, and this is the backwards version of the rehearsal, and you see in this painting how there’s a tendency to go slide out from left to right, even this downhill line, it slides out from left to right, so if you’re, if you can find a correct version, I’ll show you how it’s this one of mine. Okay, so this is
Olya Konell 24:14
like probably the one that you had flipped that was next in the lineup, coder base, yeah, this
Tim Tyler 24:20
is this is my painting, and we’re it’s for conversation. It can read from left to right, and there’s some arresting going on, but when you see it the other way, okay? So you see it the other way, your eye goes from left to right, and suddenly this edge on the right side becomes the important part, and then you vacate the painting. There’s actually a, you see that purple V that pushes you out of the painting. That’s what I don’t want. I like the other where it pushes you into the painting. Yeah, you see now it’s a whole more inviting. Yeah, it takes you into the pool.
Olya Konell 25:00
Yeah, it does. It’s so fascinating, and I’m just going to look at the comments. Martin says, ‘My wife told me one painting to not touch it anymore with the right side just having scrambled very basic big strokes while right is very detailed. And then, yeah, folks are saying that it just feels wrong when you like flip things back around, and you’re visually comparing, you’re like, whoa. So that is very fascinating,
Tim Tyler 25:26
and to her point, or Melissa’s point, detail is a good way to accentuate a focus, you know, you have softness and vagaries, and just there’s often some painters that have only one hard edge in a painting religiously, but some painters, like Dan Gerhart, he has one hard edge in all his paintings, and rest are all softer. Yeah, to do..
Olya Konell 25:52
we’re actually going to have him on doing a demo later this year. I don’t know if he’s doing an edge demo or what, but I just remembered. So, okay, this is
Tim Tyler 26:04
the same rehearsal
Olya Konell 26:05
of the
Tim Tyler 26:05
orchestra, and this one is also reversed, so you see it’s coming in from left to right, and there’s there’s nothing to arrest it. This is an abstract painting he did, this 21 this abstract painting, which just another reason to love
Olya Konell 26:20
song,
Tim Tyler 26:20
but you see how now when it’s backwards you’re able to exit. We’ll come back to the correct version later.
Olya Konell 26:25
Yeah, and this
Tim Tyler 26:28
is the, that’s the correct sergeant, that’s the correct, that’s the incorrect, that’s the flip, that’s the flip.
Olya Konell 26:33
Oops,
Tim Tyler 26:35
okay, this can go there, okay? This, yeah, this is the sergeant, this is the actual sergeant, and so you follow in through that white dress, and you have this nice rhythm between the three sisters, and then that last sister is facing back from, she’s facing back from whence you came, and she’s the stopper for that painting, and I did a flipped version of this, which shows you the importance of the left to right reading.
Olya Konell 27:02
Let me go on to the next one.
Tim Tyler 27:05
Perfect. Now you see how that doesn’t work. You vacate the painting, you come into the painting, and you slide right out the lower quadrant. Yeah, not work, you see. Yeah, thing works beautifully, because Sargent was extremely aware of that phenomenon. Yeah, it’s simply better.
Olya Konell 27:25
The chair access is like this stopper, you know, and you’re kind of.. then my eyes bounce back, and I’m like, “Oh, they’re looking at a book. I honestly, when we were looking at this version, I didn’t even notice the book, because I wouldn’t. that’s so interesting. Yeah. Oh, I love this one of yours.
Tim Tyler 27:44
It’s one of my most recent paintings, and it was very popular. I did a painting 25 years ago, and I had several people said, if you ever did another one of those paintings, then let me know, but it’s not an easy painting. There’s a lot going on, and so I finally did another one, and actually did it as a commission, but this painting, if I may, because we have also a flipped version now. The peaches are interrupted. There you go, perfect. The peaches on this flipped version, they allow you to vacate, but this is the correct version here. Yeah, the peaches bring you in from the left to the right, and then the figure arrests you, this white figure on the dark background arrest you, and the dark picture, the dark picture, but he’s holding is a high contrast thing, which, of course, lines up with her face, but the peaches are the are one of those examples, so they bring you in.
Olya Konell 28:42
Yeah,
Tim Tyler 28:42
you look at the right side, there’s nothing there. This just doesn’t work, because you come in and you vacate, you read right, and you vacate.
Olya Konell 28:51
I didn’t even pay attention to the picture, I didn’t even linger on the girl, my eyes went kind of through her straight to the peaches.
Tim Tyler 28:58
Yep,
Olya Konell 28:59
yeah,
Tim Tyler 29:00
so
Olya Konell 29:00
yeah,
Tim Tyler 29:01
divisive, felt very purposeful.
Olya Konell 29:04
Yeah, I love that.
Tim Tyler 29:07
Okay, there’s another
Olya Konell 29:08
example.
Tim Tyler 29:08
So, this is this is maybe my most Sorolla influence painting, because I like the translucent light with his sales and things. This was a.. I live in Mexico, and San Miguel Day in and day Allende, but we used to have this festival of plants, and they did it in the local garden, and they would hang these tarpaulins of clear translucent tarps over the plants for shade, and it made the most beautiful paintings, and then some bureaucrat decided to move it out to some ugly place, but no case. Wow, pushes you right out. This, this one little thing just allows you to vacate, and even this, even this little plant that’s shaped like this, you see, that helps retain you within the painting, but if you flip it, it does just the opposite. Us it, you see, it just allows you to leave the painting, see how you out of the painting, especially that that sail, that directional thing just vacate, so it’s interesting.
Olya Konell 30:12
Now I have a question for you, when you are, let’s just say you’re gathering inspiration, whether you’re looking for a reference image or you’re, you know, painting, you know, from life, you know, you’re looking for what you’re going to paint. Do you actually stop and consider all of the live things in front of you, you know? Do you ever go in, and, you know, maybe the real life version didn’t have that tree, that plant and you add that in, you know, kind of because it would make most sense in, in your actual composition.
Tim Tyler 30:48
This is an absolute perfect example. Oh, this
Olya Konell 30:50
is an example of that. Okay,
Tim Tyler 30:52
one where I picked and shows because we had kind of a brim, Brent lighting coming down that constant rim brand lighting, it allows you to pick elements from different,
Olya Konell 31:03
yeah,
Tim Tyler 31:04
and combine them, because it’s got that same continual Rembrandt lighting, so yeah, I chose like the hanging plants, I like those, I found those from a different place, I brought those in that plant with the with the blades, I brought that in as a Terminator, you know, as a topper, I cherry pick this big time. Yeah,
Olya Konell 31:26
I see
Tim Tyler 31:29
this is a Saroya. I simply like this Saroya because it’s high contrast, and one of the things that, if you’ll notice, if you squint it down, if you squint down where almost the color disappears, still nice, it’s a great way to test your composition. Just squint it down,
Olya Konell 31:46
yeah,
Tim Tyler 31:47
you don’t see any color, but it’s still a good composition, and you see that brightest brighting is against the darkest dark right there.
Olya Konell 31:54
Yeah,
Tim Tyler 31:54
and again, that’s in the golden mean. It’s just, you see these things time and again, time and again.
Olya Konell 32:01
Yeah, this is
Tim Tyler 32:01
a similar painting, also by Sorolla, but you see how the energy comes over to that woman there, and she, the woman, is very good at arresting your attention. It’s, it’s almost parenthetical. I see again, who are just comes over, and it, you stop with that woman. Oh, this is a lovely
Olya Konell 32:21
example. This is one
Tim Tyler 32:23
of the best examples of composition in the world. And I used to
Olya Konell 32:27
teach..
Tim Tyler 32:27
I wish I had the ability, but this is an essential composition. Sargent did this painting. It’s like 88 inches square, and
Olya Konell 32:37
he
Tim Tyler 32:37
did this for a fellow artist, which allowed the artist allowed him great liberty to paint this the way he painted it, but if you paint, if you take out any element, if you take out one of the girls, or if you take out even that light in the top from the mirror, if you read that the balance falls apart, that Jesus is minimal balance, there’s only like seven components in this whole painting,
Olya Konell 33:00
but
Tim Tyler 33:00
so beautifully asymmetrically designed, but see the mirror in is right above that little girl collection, that’s quite purposeful.
Olya Konell 33:10
Yeah,
Tim Tyler 33:11
this, you see, this painting has some locomotion, because you start from the left with a little girl with the bright pinafore, and you start reading across, and Sargent was aware of that, and you see that red screen, not only is that a stopper, that’s a red stopper.
Olya Konell 33:26
Yeah,
Tim Tyler 33:26
because he was aware that he put a red stopper in the painting for design reasons.
Olya Konell 33:32
Wow, yeah. And I see this from the mirror down. I don’t know if you guys can catch that on the camera on the recording. I will have these like blown out full screen, but there’s this perfect line that goes right down to the girl, and it’s perfectly parallel to the stopper, so and then there’s just some reflective little gold lines between the red and that, and that just pulls you down. Some Suzanne says, How many times have I looked at at this and never saw it? You know, as far as cool, yeah. Frank
Tim Tyler 34:02
Bailey,
Olya Konell 34:04
yeah.
Tim Tyler 34:05
Okay, this is another one. I get excited about these, but this is another example of where you read from left to right. It’s a fairly busy composition, but nevertheless, the people over clustered in that dark mass, that focal point, and the other people, this is sort of similar to El Hillel, where you get some rhythmic people coming in from the left, rhythmically coming in, and you get this cluster of people, and there’s a little red spot, even that first, that’s again, that’s a stopper, you see the little red piece that’s an arrest you from from leaving, but there’s a, there’s a kind of a cadence. He’s really good with cadences, by the
Olya Konell 34:44
way,
Tim Tyler 34:45
like in music. He was very musical. He played piano very well, and he was aware of music, and, and so he brings you in this lyrical bouncing along, and then into that dark mass, which is. I think just some people resting, or this is the still there in Florence. That’s the hospital in Florence, I believe. That I think it still is a hospital, but
Olya Konell 35:11
yeah, that’s definitely very musical. Oh, this is this, this is almost abstract, but not
Tim Tyler 35:19
abstract, and he knew abstract design so well, I guarantee you, he moved stuff around to make this painting work, because it’s just too nice, and we know from letters from his, we know from letters from his people that he painted, he was, he was so famous that every when they had their portrait painted by Sargent, they would write letters to their friends, and those letters survive, but they said Sergeant would yank on their clothing and stuff around and change things because he wanted it a certain way. This painting is too good to just have happened. He, he moved stuff around, I guarantee he did that.
Olya Konell 35:56
Yeah, I can totally see you see that.
Tim Tyler 36:00
Okay, here’s another great one. This, this is.. I can’t remember the name something they’re making, glass or something.
Olya Konell 36:07
Yeah, Venetian glass workers.
Tim Tyler 36:10
So, I don’t know what that means exactly, but this is a good example where you come in from left to right, and that one figure arrests you, and not only does she arrest you, but that V, you see that V shape issue right back in, and you see the other V shape on the top is a V shape that points you towards her, so this V type in the center points you towards the other V shape, almost looks like a piece of like scissors, and but those, those arrest you, those those bring you into her hands, and then her face and figure arrests the locomotion, because there’s a bit of locomotion in this, it’s not real strong. Yeah, this is a
Olya Konell 36:49
this is
Tim Tyler 36:52
another painting I like. I think this is in Frisco. I think this is in San Francisco, because I saw
Olya Konell 36:59
the Breakfast Table Fog Museum. Oh, there’s
Tim Tyler 37:02
a fog. Okay, so it’s in Boston. So this is a really neat example where the figure brings you in, and the introduction from the left to the right is really not that compelling, but you get the figure, and the figure is very muted. She’s in a dark place, and it’s kind of a low contrast. But what, what resolves the locomotion? It’s kind of a moderate locomotion in this painting, is that pot, and all the detail on the table, barking jewelry, the silverware right
Olya Konell 37:35
over here. Yeah, that, that silver, that shiny silver, and then the little teapot, and then you have the roses, and then you’re drawn back into that silver,
Tim Tyler 37:44
and one of your listeners or readers before mentioned detail, and this is an example how the detail arrests you over here, that the girl in a ball, and it’s all that lacks crispness, it lacks detail, but once you get into that scintillating, sparkling stuff,
Olya Konell 38:01
yeah,
Tim Tyler 38:02
just compelling. And okay,
Olya Konell 38:05
this is lovely.
Tim Tyler 38:06
This is one of my friends, one of my friends. He saw this painting in person, and he said no one needs to paint Niagara ever again, because it’s done. Oh, I love,
Olya Konell 38:21
I love that, that light, that rainbow from the water. How, yeah, it’s
Tim Tyler 38:26
just amazing. And even the brain, bro, you see, brings you in from left to right to Dallas Moran, about 1868 I think. But see, there’s some things we can learn here. He brought in those dark clouds on the on the right side to arrest the linear motion of the horizon. The horizon would have blown you from left to right, but regarding those left clouds to arrest that, and if you look at the dark shape of those left, the clouds there, the bank of the clouds is exactly the same shape as the piece of the of the river, you see the Niagara,
Olya Konell 39:00
it’s
Tim Tyler 39:02
also a V. You see how the river arrests you, and it keeps it points you back into the composition. Dark clouds also point you back into the composition.
Olya Konell 39:14
Yeah,
Tim Tyler 39:17
he did that because you see the river, the falls start to there’s a bit of in the middle there’s a bit of an arrow that wants you to help you vacate the landscape and so he did those things I just spoke about he did those to counterbalance the exit because there’s a propensity when you read across almost wanted vacated but on the far right side, he did several elements to help retain you within the composition,
Olya Konell 39:47
and even this extra detail right over here on this rock. I don’t know if you guys can see just the detail on this. Yeah, it’s really,
Tim Tyler 39:56
and by the way, on that rock that you mentioned again, if you take that and rotate it down. Rock is almost exactly in the golden mean, that high contrast rock within all that white is is also in a golden mean. You just see these things, and once you see them, you can’t unlearn them every time you see a painting.
Olya Konell 40:13
Yes, you start looking for it. Oh, okay, that’s so that just like messes with my brain, my brain just literally tingled.
Tim Tyler 40:24
It’s hard to like it now, because it just goes whoosh right off the painting to think, and so it simply doesn’t work. It’s an interesting, beautiful painting, but you just, you just sweep right off the painting, but this painting retains you. You see, this, this couldn’t be a better example.
Olya Konell 40:43
Yeah,
Tim Tyler 40:45
this I simply like. This is some guys working.. I don’t know what they’re doing exactly. They’re weaving, I think,
Olya Konell 40:50
weaving, yes,
Tim Tyler 40:52
Venice. But the composition of this is just excellent, and that the darkest, darkest next to the lightest light, and that forms this, it’s just pure abstraction.
Olya Konell 41:04
Yeah, that’s
Tim Tyler 41:04
my complaint. Is a lot of abstract painters know nothing about design. I mean, with all disrespect, they should learn design and composition if they’re going to be a painter, and this is abstract design at its finest,
Olya Konell 41:22
I That’s beautiful.
Tim Tyler 41:24
This is mr. Church, Church, but the reason I wanted to use this is, is the water and the tree both together form something of a stopper. There’s not a lot of locomotion, but even at the top of the clouds, he broke, he broke up the top of the mountain to soften that, because he didn’t want you to exit the upper left. If you look at painting after painting after painting, the upper, the upper right of a painting is just boring, and that’s quite purposeful, because the painters through the centuries did not want you to linger up in that upper right corner, but the left side, your introductory corner, and the waterfall again is on that square. If you rotate it down, that’s where the waterfall is. It’s just the perfect square, golden mean.
Olya Konell 42:13
Yeah, and what’s interesting is, by lingering on the waterfall, I noticed the little cross that’s about, you know, another. It’s also kind of right on the third, but on the other third.
Tim Tyler 42:26
Okay, this is this was interesting when I started researching, trying to find pieces that that made my point. I found more with slow home, or this is Winslow Homer. I found more examples of Homer doing this on purpose than I did Saroya, Sorolla, it mattered less to him, but there’s several homers you see that stopper where the little almost looks like a tornado, he did that quite purposefully, and if somehow with the magic of technology, if you read, if you remove that, you just sweep right along the horizon out of the painting, but he put that little magical V in there, which corresponds with the tail of the shark, and again it’s sort of that elliptical, it retains you that that dark thing corresponds, and actually the angle of the boat goes up and picks up that it’s not quite a tornado, but that’s sort of looks like what it does.
Olya Konell 43:25
Yeah, it’s like, yeah, it’s like a little spout, a water spout. This
Tim Tyler 43:30
water is probably, yeah, that’s probably,
Olya Konell 43:32
but yeah, you’re right, it’s right north of the shark tail, and then it kind of brings you back in, and then it swoops you back in, and then you notice the tiny little boat that you might have missed, left side of the horizon.
Tim Tyler 43:45
Yes, this is one of my favorite homers. It’s got a wonderful cadence, even that dark wave in the bottom, see the rhythm up, it’s very nice,
Olya Konell 43:52
it’s beautiful. Yeah,
Tim Tyler 43:56
okay. This is a.. I had never seen this one before, but it’s a sergeant, and I’ve seen a lot of sergeant, but again, you see the little figure there, that’s actually a figure in there, and that’s.. I couldn’t tell this figure either, but right
Olya Konell 44:11
here,
Tim Tyler 44:11
but see, it’s exactly squared off. If you rotate it down, that’s a golden mean, in particular, the waterfall points you towards the figure. This little highlight on the top points you towards the figure. There’s this diagonal line that splits the composition, and it pushes you right into that figure, which would otherwise.. here, you know, who did that a lot was NC Wyeth. NC Wythe, but it’s these guys do this on purpose. I did a painting. This lady bought a painting of mine 30 years ago. She bought four paintings, and so the gallery called me in to meet her, and I was explaining to her how I painted a waterfall reminded me. I painted this waterfall, and I told her how I moved around and I changed positions to get the. Particular angle to accentuate this tree, and she thought I was lying, she thought I was making it up, she didn’t believe me, but why would we not do that? Yeah,
Olya Konell 45:10
that is fascinating. Oh, this is lovely.
Tim Tyler 45:14
This is a really good example of a stopper, and this stopper is more delicate because it comes from left to right, but that guy you see, the guy’s even looking back into the composition, the trout fish runs called this detrot stream, but you see the cadence comes across nicely, but there’s that person that arrests you again, it’s just almost elliptical, where it comes across and it retains you that the human figure, that human face is very compelling and powerful.
Olya Konell 45:43
Yeah, and what’s.. I also notice is the what he’s holding, the fishing rod lines up with the kind of the angle on the rock, which kind of creates this really nice straight line back into the stream.
Tim Tyler 45:56
Yes, and I guarantee he did that on purpose.
Olya Konell 45:59
Yeah, he had to have that’s too, too perfect. Oh, that is.. I have never.. I mean, I’ve never noticed that. And now it’s like every.. wow. Okay, that just makes me almost like
Tim Tyler 46:17
there’s a perfect example. This is the opposite. And now you vacate the painting, you read from left to right, and there’s nothing, and the initial part, even, is not that interesting, because he sort of blends in his camouflage, but psyche, we want, we want some balance and closure, but this is satisfying, you see, you come from left to right, naked, oh, there’s a guy, it’s satisfying, but there’s a lot of psychological stuff that goes into paintings.
Olya Konell 46:44
Yeah, Suzanne says, “Dizzy, exactly. When I switch, I feel a weird tingle at the back of my brain, like it’s processing too hard, like the little thing is spinning in my brain computer.
Tim Tyler 46:55
About 1o’clock on a Monday, I’ll say, is your, is your brain hurting a little bit right here? They go, yeah, it is. And I said, that’s a good sign. Yeah, learning things. Oh, this
Olya Konell 47:09
is forever going to change how I set things up. I’m just
Tim Tyler 47:13
okay. So, this is the actual version of the, the, the other Wyeth, and you see she’s she’s looking from here to there. This is not my favorite painting, but it makes the point is that you go from there to there. This is a little bit of a tennis match composition that I refer to. You go buying, buying, buying.
Olya Konell 47:34
Yes, yeah,
Tim Tyler 47:35
I don’t like that, but it still conveys the point that I’m going to make with the flipped version.
Olya Konell 47:42
Peggy asks for cultures that read from right to left. Will these compositions still work?
Tim Tyler 47:49
I think they still work, but I don’t know that they work with the same power in the same way that I can’t appreciate Eastern art. I assume that that power, that that thing that we learn, but we learn to read, I think, is cultural. I think
Olya Konell 48:07
you know, and I think for Eastern artists, or Eastern, you know, you know, people that read from right to left, there are our art might feel they might have the same experience that we are having when we’re looking at something and then switching it back and and forth, so, and, and, and I think the whole, I think the whole point of this isn’t to say we should try to appeal to everybody, but it’s just kind of, it makes a point, Who is who are your main collectors, where are you selling your art, you know, being conscious of that, so if you are, you know, out east, and everybody around you reads, you know, the other way, you don’t want to do it this way, unless you’re collectors, you know what I mean, like, unless that’s who’s buying your work, because they’re not going to maybe connect with it as easily as somebody you know would here, if that makes any sense,
Tim Tyler 49:02
perhaps some of the people watching right now that are of Eastern orientation and grew up in even hemisphere, if they could, could tell us if how they feel about that, because I simply don’t know.
Olya Konell 49:16
Yeah, yeah, it would be, it would be a good question to ask somebody and see how they feel, that would be a great poll. And somebody says, if so, so if selling paintings in China, flip your, you know, flip the image
Tim Tyler 49:30
about 12 times, and you see how now she vacates the, she kind of slides out the painting,
Olya Konell 49:36
yeah, the
Tim Tyler 49:37
other way she slides into the painting. So,
Olya Konell 49:40
yeah, so interesting. This is one of your
Tim Tyler 49:43
recent paintings, and I use that because when we flip it, it’s quite boring, quite less powerful. But one of the things I did, you see, how it’s just weird. It feels weird.
Olya Konell 49:56
Yeah,
Tim Tyler 49:58
because that purple. Cluster of flowers, and that purple piece of shiny material is also that’s elliptical, it’s almost semicircular, you see,
Olya Konell 50:10
that
Tim Tyler 50:10
just retains you, and there’s nothing of interest on the right side. All the interest comes in from here, and this is another point to mention, too, is if you look at about 85 or 90% of the portraits ever done from 1450 forward, the light comes in from the, the from the left to the right. That’s because this chiaroscuro that we see coming in from left to right is the natural way. It’s the same locomotion that we see with elements, the light coming from the left to right. You see it if you start counting, looking at famous portraits, 85 or 90% of them, the light comes from left to right. Rembrandt lighting is the exception, and I like that, but you see how this just doesn’t work, and so I don’t
Olya Konell 51:00
even notice little teapot on this 100% the purple pulls me through and then I lingered on that little pot and like look at those little details and on this one you kind of just flow right right past
Tim Tyler 51:14
it yeah it’s just not satisfying it this is this is all quite deliberate but it’s kind of fun to
Olya Konell 51:19
yeah oh and this is the one I think
Tim Tyler 51:23
Lake Garda of Sargent.
Olya Konell 51:27
This is the reversal of it. Yeah, this is what you were trying to show earlier.
Tim Tyler 51:31
So, this, this shows you, you come in from left to right, and this one building does help arrest the locomotion, but still, there’s this big sweep of the arts itself, and it just pushes you outwards. This one brightly lit house over there that helps arrest the locomotion a little bit, but
Olya Konell 51:51
the
Tim Tyler 51:51
original version is simply better, and I thought this was a good example to show that even the dark part of that inner harbor, the dark part is also an arrow, and so I think this simply works better.
Olya Konell 52:07
Yeah,
Tim Tyler 52:08
this is another example of Sartre. I think the Sergeant in Venice, you see how the cross is lined up with a figure, and it’s just a perfect way to arrest you. It’s just there’s so many examples of Sargent, he just knew this stuff so well. There’s another one, see, he’s also in Venice here, and the girls, you see, the women are softened. It’s that doorway that’s the most compelling part, because it’s a high contrast, and again, if you rotate the painting, if you take the eye to paint and rotate it down, you’ll find doorways right on the Golden Mean,
Olya Konell 52:43
yeah.
Tim Tyler 52:45
Okay, this is this is famous El Hilleo, and it’s in Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and this painting works both ways, but this is the correct version, and you see he creates this cadence with the guys, and even the guitars, there’s this cadence, and she comes along, and she’s right on the golden mean again. If you rotate the painting, she’s on the golden mean. Now, this is the backwards version, which is not that bad, because she’s leaning in, and the guys in the background, but in my opinion, again, he used that red stopper, by the way, in the correct version, but she’s a red stopper. He used a red stopper. I mean, how overt can that be? He does it time and again, so not only is it stoppers like a red stop sign, and so we don’t get that this time, and because, because the stoppers on the wrong side, you kind of bounce along, and you just exit the painting with the players, but the correct side, there’s that red stopper, there’s even a hand going up, and it, it’s just all done deliberately. He’s 24 years old when he painted this.
Olya Konell 53:56
Wow, that’s impressive. I have Noreen asking, I get the need to rest on the right of the painting. Can you talk more about why to, or how to arrest the locomotion?
Tim Tyler 54:09
Well, actually, I spent a lot of time, and Sargent clearly also spends a lot of time arresting locomotion, and not, not all, not all paintings have strong locomotion. This one is a very strong example of locomotion, but a portrait has virtually no locomotion. But you still bring the light in from the left to the right, simply like it is on my face now. You bring the light in from the left to the right, it just flows more naturally, and there’s sergeants that are painted the opposite, but they don’t flow in the same way. If you look at Caravaggio, almost all of his, you know, carescuo is from left to right, and so being aware of that, being cognizant when you’re composing, and I spend a lot of times, especially with still eye. And figures I spent a lot of time composing, but I’m ever aware of that left left to right flow, and I will do things like Sergeant did with the red, that’s that’s a third example of Sergeant using a red stopper in this conversation, but the red stopper is a, it arrests you. There’s several other things you can simply make the right side of your composition rather soft and boring. Sometimes that’s that’s all it takes, and there are many examples of that. Yeah, better.
Olya Konell 55:36
And Carol says, not only have you focused on my favorite painters, but showed it in a clear way what stoppage
Tim Tyler 55:44
is. There’s more to come. Glad it’s working. Glad it’s helping,
Olya Konell 55:51
and I think this is the last image that I have in my set. So, if you would like me to pull up any specific one, I can jump to it to cover
Tim Tyler 56:00
one. Sergeant did of a stairway, I think he’s in Italy, but stairway with round pilasters on top. But one of the first pieces I sent you was the sergeant stairway, and this, it’s one of the best compositions ever.
Olya Konell 56:16
Somebody asks, is red ache stopper cultural too? Is it? Do you notice any variations as far as, like, what folks will use?
Tim Tyler 56:28
That’s another very good question. And I don’t know the answer to that. I tend to think that those of us - I’ve had a few students that are colorblind, and it’s a whole different conversation with them, but if we’re not colorblind, then I do think red, red is attractive, and as a, as a people wear red shirts to look attractive, or red dresses. But let me just talk about this painting, and maybe come back to that. This is this is one of the best compositions ever done, and when Sergeant did this, I guarantee you, he moved around until he got just this angle, and that cypress tree behind that main ball, I bet you, he moved that cypress tree around to help the composition, but look at the negative shapes behind those three dark balls on the top, you see every negative shape behind all of those is different. The negative shape behind the big pilaster, I don’t know what you call that thing, but pilaster on top, that negative shape is different. But the whole sweep of this brings you in from left to right, and then it terminates you again if you rotate it down. It’s exactly in the golden mean, where the edge of that building is. But the rhythm of this painting, if you squint it down, it’s good. If you even if you flip this painting, it’s not bad. You can flip it upside down, and some abstract painting, but it’s just so neat. There’s there’s all that directional stuff in the lower part there, all those you see, those arrows all pointing you towards the dark ones, and those dark ones are very satisfying. Stopper, and see, these are these are a dark stopper. Another thing Sergeant did is he brought those white clouds in. Those clouds were done on purpose to accentuate the contrast of that dark ball. He used clouds all the time for that effect. He brought those clouds in just to increase the contrast between the dark.
Olya Konell 58:30
Absolutely, yeah, he did a fantastic job here. And a couple questions here that folks had, so we want to talk about red, but also, you know any guidance in applying these principles to abstract painting, because one of the things that you had talked about,
Tim Tyler 58:48
please do I, I have seen so many people do abstract paintings, first of all, they don’t know the technology, they, they do things that will fall apart in 10 years because they haven’t studied chemistry and they put gesso on and then they’ll put oil paint on and they’ll cover it with gesso and there’s just there’s no reason not to be educated about your pet profession or even your hobby there’s no reason not to be you know just to read more and to go to more museums, but I think abstract painters need to learn composition just like everybody else, and you have to learn it to the point where you absorb it, you absorb it into your heart, you know. By the time Sargent was 25 or 30, he had all that compositional sensitivity built in, and this is a later painting, I think. If you can see the pain in person, there’s a wonderful brush strokes up in there in the foreground, which are really nice. But
Olya Konell 59:52
would, would you, if somebody’s doing abstract, would the also the advice be, I’m just thinking, like, if I was going to do an abstract. Um, maybe would it be helpful to take like prior work that led just say that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to look at things I’ve done and I’m going to analyze them and see if I’m backwards or however, and you know, I’m almost wondering if it would be useful to like print it out on a piece of paper and then kind of cut the elements around and see if that would make sense, or do it on a computer with, like, Photoshop or something, just to kind of experiment to help with future planning, you know.
Tim Tyler 1:00:31
And to do them small, even to do a little sketch like this, if it works in a three by five, it’s a bigger painting, and consequently, if it doesn’t work this big, it’s only get worse bigger. Yeah, take you can take this sergeant, for example, turn it upside down, flip it, and look at the composition. It’s still balanced. And I started doing abstracts because they were selling here, and so my gallery asked me to do some abstract paintings, and I sold one in four days. It was expensive, but I used all these, I used all these things that I’ve learned for 52 years in my abstract paintings. Actually, maybe we can add some of my abstracts in the video version. I’ll send you some.
Olya Konell 1:01:16
Yeah, and I do. You have them on your website, because I can. I do.
Tim Tyler 1:01:20
Yes,
Olya Konell 1:01:22
you have
Tim Tyler 1:01:25
the contemporary pieces. I
Olya Konell 1:01:27
contemporary. Okay,
Tim Tyler 1:01:29
there we go. There’ll be some abstract versions there.
Olya Konell 1:01:31
Okay,
Tim Tyler 1:01:32
okay. Here we go. You see that the red circular disc? You see how that comes in from left to right, and it arrests you. That bright spot is in the golden mean, it comes across and it arrests your motion from left to right. It’s that’s that’s traditional painting, and this one you see again, you read this is more like Rembrandt lighting, but you’re still reading a little bit from the left to the right, and that’s why I biased that copper to the far side, and this is also something we haven’t spoken about, is that this is a color contrast, where I had this antique copper pot, I wanted to accentuate it, so I used the opposite on the color wheel.
Olya Konell 1:02:14
I just love how you made it feel so three dimensional, three dimensional, yeah,
Tim Tyler 1:02:20
this one is a red sergeant stopper. You see the red bridge again, and there’s that red elliptical stopper, not a sergeant stopper, but he did the red stop. Yeah, this one has seen this is an example of painting that doesn’t have a lot of locomotion. It more just sweeps you inward towards the middle, almost like a portrait, a portraitist is a version. There’s very little locomotion, because the human face is very arresting to other humans, and when you do a portrait, there’s virtually no locomotion. But this is a, this is a painting exempt from locomotion, really.
Olya Konell 1:02:59
I’m gonna grab a couple comments, Christine says, just, just a comment. I’m off Tim’s tack room painting. And then Patty says, Thank you very much. This was so interesting. And then Laura says, shows the importance of taking time to do those boring thumbnail sketches. Yeah, yeah, that’s very true.
Tim Tyler 1:03:16
They’re very motivating. You tell the thumb goes, whoa, this is nice. And then up, and you can refine it, but that the little thumbnails are quite motivating.
Olya Konell 1:03:26
They’re, they’re forgiving too. You’re not investing too much time into something that doesn’t work,
Tim Tyler 1:03:32
and you can do a little thumbnail and get a nice little value study with pencil or charcoal, and then you can introduce little pieces of color, like little construction paper of red or construction, and start to figure this is a painting that’s quite abstract, and it doesn’t have a lot of locomotion, but nevertheless, that the focal point is still in that golden mean with that brightest bright in the middle.
Olya Konell 1:03:57
Yeah, and you know that line, though, still pulls you through like that. There is that direction
Tim Tyler 1:04:05
again. The elliptical stop, really, too. You see,
Olya Konell 1:04:08
yeah. But I see what you mean, even with abstract, having, you know, and this is the light on the left, slightly. You know, I can see that. That’s lovely. Yeah, that’s very, very good examples. Oh, this is this
Tim Tyler 1:04:27
is fun. This was fun. This painting again, there’s like a Rembrandt lighting on this one, but one of the things I did here that you can’t see is that little paper airplane is very thick, it’s very impasto, and some of the other stuff, like the shadows, are very thin, because that’s another thing people did for 400 years, is you paint your brights really thick and dark soft, so they can recede.
Olya Konell 1:04:53
Carol says, what I’ll do now is flip all my compositions. I know I literally want to go. Like after this, I know what I will be doing. I’m gonna go look through my sketches, I’m gonna go through my doodles, and just see where am I landing
Tim Tyler 1:05:12
people.
Olya Konell 1:05:13
Yeah, and Sharon says, “Thank you so much, Tim. I, and only I, I learned so many new things. I learned so many new things, too. Christine says note, I know how to say it. No tan, right? Thumbnail sketches are things I have come to appreciate. Gary says Devo rock band, you must flip it. Oh, the song. This has been a fabulous class. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge, you’re so generous, says Julie. I have a question. Do you still teach, Tim? Do you, are you still actively teaching, or are you ever going to teach again?
Tim Tyler 1:05:51
Well, if I were enticed, I would teach. I like to teach. I found that I used to go to other places, but when I do it in America. About 20 years ago, I was teaching every three weeks, kind of enough. I get tired of getting on an airplane every three weeks, but you know, I would teach six weeks a year. If there’s an academy or somewhere that invites me to teach, I like it. Yeah, my students like it. And so I could do it again, but I find where I live now, the influx of students into Mexico has really been diminished lately, with some of the news from Puerto Vallarta, etc.
Olya Konell 1:06:32
Yeah, you know, maybe someday you’ll do some destination kind of packages or something, but I heard you’re writing a book,
Tim Tyler 1:06:41
yes, and I went to get away from the distractions, because I knew I didn’t know what I was doing, really done a few articles, but I wanted to write a book about painters and the reality of painting. You read The Old Man of the Sea, where he talks about fishing, and you know that the guy that wrote the book knows how to fish well. I’ve read so many books about artists that you can tell that’s a writer and not an artist. That’s wrong, they just do. So I want to write a book about painting, and then include about 18 of my paintings in the book, and write a story about what led to that painting, kind of
Olya Konell 1:07:26
the
Tim Tyler 1:07:26
backstory.
Olya Konell 1:07:27
I love that kind of.. I think that’s a fantastic idea, and I think there’s.. you’re right, there’s so much.. it’s. it would be like me describing what my husband does for work. I’ll give you a visual, but I’m going to get a lot of things wrong, so yeah. One Joe asks, do you use rotational symmetry?
Tim Tyler 1:07:57
Rotational symmetry, I don’t know what that means exactly.
Olya Konell 1:08:02
Yeah, Joe, if you can elaborate, that would be awesome. And then Sandy says, agreed. So many interesting concepts I’ve never learned before. Thank you. Yeah, so, and so, as Christine says, I love to read, so write fast.
Tim Tyler 1:08:18
Let’s sleep, check back in a year, it’ll self publish, and it’ll be on my website. So, about a year from now, check back in. Do you,
Olya Konell 1:08:27
do you do a newsletter or some way folks can sign up and like get notified or something like that?
Tim Tyler 1:08:35
Yeah, so write me by the way in anticipation of this podcast, my subscriptions have just skyrocketed. It’s huge. I checked the analytics, it just through the ceiling. So, hopefully we’ll get some more signups for that. And should I ever do a workshop again in the States or in Italy or somewhere, I’ll announce it, but I don’t like doing the logistics of that. In the past, the museum - there’s a museum that hired me to do three years of workshops, and that was fun. I just showed up. I was done at 4o’clock I didn’t have to babysit or set up train tickets or anything.
Olya Konell 1:09:18
Yeah, it is a lot, especially, yeah, but you know something. I was gonna say, I’m sure the audience would appreciate that. If you ever get inspired to share your thoughts, you know, off the cuff, you know, record your thoughts and share them. There’s, you know, whether it be in, and this isn’t like marketing advice, this is more or less just to put it out there, you know? You could no fancy editing, record a video with your phone, throw it on YouTube, and then send it out to your newsletter, and be like, hey, here’s some thoughts on whatever it is, because there’s. So many amazing artists like you to have learned so much, and you know every artist is influenced by another artist. We all kind of learn from each other, and it’s just that’s the way it’s always been. It would be just amazing to like capture those pieces of your brain and put them somewhere where they can live and continue to inspire.
Tim Tyler 1:10:20
I’ve got to do more of that, and Clint talks about that. Yeah, I know I need to do more. A YouTube channel, it’s Timothy Tyler.
Olya Konell 1:10:29
Oh, okay.
Tim Tyler 1:10:30
History or something. There’s six, but there’s a.. there’s actually a conversation on there about composition, and the Sergeant Painting is on that YouTube. My little baby.
Olya Konell 1:10:43
Well, I’m going to find it right now for us, because here, here’s, here’s what from the marketing side, what’s working now. FYI, for anyone listening, because of AI, just candid, shaky, like it doesn’t have to be perfect, it matters what the message is, so you don’t even need a fancy camera, you don’t need fancy editing, you could literally just set it up and just record it that way, and be like, hey, I really want to show you why, you know, and I’m encouraging you to do it, because it was so valuable to me and to the audience, I think it would just be fun, even like once a month, share your thoughts. Try to Tim, what’s your YouTube channel called?
Tim Tyler 1:11:26
It’s Timothy Tyler. Often, if you just Google Timothy Tyler or Timothy C. Tyler, there’s a couple other artists that are not me. But
Olya Konell 1:11:37
yeah, there you are.
Tim Tyler 1:11:38
That’s me right there. But see, one of those is a conversation about Sargent and landscape painting. I don’t know which one it is now, but it’s Sargent landscape painting. It’s from a classroom. One of my smarter students said, “You’ve got to be recording these. Oh, there’s a Sergeant conversation.
Olya Konell 1:11:57
Oh, this one right here,
Tim Tyler 1:11:59
guys, would enjoy that, because it’s a lot about conversations, and it would be fun, because it’s similar to what we just been talking about, and I’m going
Olya Konell 1:12:09
to share the link to it. It’s the ad on my screen right now. I clicked it, and then you guys, yeah, check it out. I think that’s, I think that’s lovely that one of your students did, did that,
Tim Tyler 1:12:22
but she did it for me. Yeah.
Olya Konell 1:12:25
No, I really appreciate this. Was so valuable, and I’m encouraging folks that are listening to go check out, subscribe to your newsletter, because you know, even though you don’t send them out often, you said you do more. I think, as artists, frequency is what works for us, so, like, you know, you sharing about Italy and Spain, it’s kind of cool. We can go back and read your older, older ones if we want to, but check out his archive as well.
Tim Tyler 1:12:54
One of the things I would say about workshops, if you live somewhere, say you live in Cincinnati, and there’s a good art school there. Tell the art school that you want me to come, and they can make an offer, and then I can just show up, because there are about 20 good art schools right now in America that teach really good. They have really good teachers, almost without exception, they have really good teachers coming in, and, and I would do that. Yeah, a lot of school,
Olya Konell 1:13:24
I think that is a great idea. And Carol says, “Do you like Florida?
Tim Tyler 1:13:29
I have never been to Florida. I’m one of the few people in the whole world that’s never been to Florida. I’ve exhibited in Florida timeless, time and time again, but I’ve never taught a workshop there.
Olya Konell 1:13:40
Oh, well. Carol, if you’re in Florida, talk to a local place somewhere where you can open. I just shared the wrong link, so just, okay, just as a heads up on that $99 link, that link is right, it just is being fixed as we speak, so it will work if you just save it. It’s that last link that I had put up, for some reason it was something they forgot to do on their end, but it says “Your ill not found now. It will find it. Just check back in a few hours or something. But yeah, but anyway, no, this, this, this has been great, and I appreciate everybody that has held on. We’ve gone a little bit over. Is there anyone have any last minute questions for Tim? Tim, do you have anything else you want to share?
Tim Tyler 1:14:35
Well, I love good questions. I had a, I had a, I taught in Raleigh one time, and I had this one guy who was a, he was a psychologist, MD, and he taught at Harvard, and he took my class, and he’s also an eye doctor, and he was trying to figure out how the eye talks to the brain, and so he took my first class, and then he took my other two classes each day. Right, and he had the best questions, he had questions that I’d have to say yes, and really love those good questions, and I’ll answer if somebody just emails me, I’ll answer,
Olya Konell 1:15:16
okay,
Tim Tyler 1:15:16
just to, so
Olya Konell 1:15:18
yeah, so folks, if you have questions, reach out to Tim. Connect with him. I love you know that’s the thing that I love about all of our amazing, you know, all of our - I call them you guys are like the signature, the masters, that all the FASO artists that are, you know, that we all aspire to be someday. You know what I love about our amazing group of artists that we bring on that we’ve had a chance to work with us, you guys are all so kind and humble and giving of your knowledge, and it just makes me really proud to be an artist, and I hope you guys feel this the same way. Artists, we do have that culture of like helping out the other, it really is this amazing community that we all get to be a part of, that for
Tim Tyler 1:16:05
us, you know, people get 18 and 20. When I was 18 and 20 was all paper letters, and I’ve got letters from Wilson Hurley, Clark Hill, Bill O, and I’ve got all these famous guys that I wrote to. Every one of them wrote me back.
Olya Konell 1:16:20
You should maybe publish some of those someday letters from the artists.
Tim Tyler 1:16:25
Yeah, I’ll put them in the book.
Olya Konell 1:16:26
Put them in the book. I love that, because, like you said, we know some of what we know about the old old master just from the letters, you know that that people wrote. So, yeah, I love that.
Tim Tyler 1:16:41
Interesting too, you only reason that we know what people wore before 1700 is because of art.
Olya Konell 1:16:50
That’s true.
Tim Tyler 1:16:51
Those are gone. It’s only the Greek sculptures, the paintings, the murals. That’s the only reason we know that is captured in art.
Olya Konell 1:17:00
And think about this as well. If the internet was to go away, there was something drastic that happened, you know, the AI took over and just press delete. Can you imagine everybody’s Google Drives and iPhone clouds, and you know, all the stuff that’s so digital. What will we be left as a species, as a society, as humankind, we will be left with our art, and you know, future generations can look back at us hundreds or 1000s of years and be like, “Oh, this is this is what they had, so
Tim Tyler 1:17:36
that would be good for sales, except the marketing aspect, the internet does have the advantage of the marketing.
Olya Konell 1:17:45
Yes, yeah, yeah. No, but I’m just thinking of, like, if you know, because we don’t know, we won’t be around, but it will be interesting to see if we could ever look back from the heavenly clouds and be like, oh, so there’s my painting, it’s teaching people how
Tim Tyler 1:18:03
to do this. Teaching, I’d like to speak of is everybody now is all concerned about AI, especially when you do contest. You can’t use AI, and I think that’s hypersensitivity about that is the same thing that happened about 1890 when photographs started becoming prevalent, there’s.. oh, I’m done. Nobody’s ever going to buy a painting again. Well, John Singer Sargent painted through that whole era without any problem. I think good art still has a place, and..
Olya Konell 1:18:34
and you know, I will be.. I will go as far as to say, and I’m not.. I’m saying this because this is what the marketing gurus in the non-art space are saying people are being drawn towards the tangible, like it’s just increasing in value, so something handmade is more valuable. Secondhand is becoming more valuable because inexpensive and cheap clothing or furniture is just available from the push of your button on Amazon, like the things that are handmade take longer in person experiences art. I think it’s actually going to increase in value, and I’m seeing more people that I never would have thought would get into collecting art getting into collecting art, you know, in the social media space, you know, I’m just noticing it becoming more of a trend, so, and I read where current trends are pushing us back to romanticism. Yes, I are. Yeah, I’ve read the same thing, vinyl records. Yes,
Tim Tyler 1:19:35
yes.
Olya Konell 1:19:36
Did you know, apparently VCRs are $100 on eBay, because no one’s making them, so now I don’t know who’s buying them, but they’re selling for these two young kids, go to garage sales. I watched a little story about them buying up garage sale VCRs and selling them for 100 or more on eBay, so
Tim Tyler 1:19:56
well, there was a two guys, Richard Smith and David LaFell. Printed books in the 70s, and their publisher decided, for whatever reason, not to republish, but their books are three or $400 now on eBay. You would think they would say, “Okay, we should republish. I mean,
Olya Konell 1:20:13
yeah,
Tim Tyler 1:20:15
so I don’t know.
Olya Konell 1:20:17
Yes, on flaws, it’s called Wabi Sabi, Japanese highly valued original, and what it has a flaw, because it’s the only one collectible coins. Yeah, like you know, printed currency is the same way. So I think that’s a beautiful message to kind of like wrap up with, is like, keep painting, be original, don’t let you know, don’t let all that AI stuff get in the way, and really go back to the basics, because that’s like I said, I’m going to do, I’m going to go, I’m going to look at what I’ve done, have an honest chat with myself.
Tim Tyler 1:20:55
I’ll tell you something that’s very old school, that people don’t say much anymore, but it’s what those guys, when I was 1819, 20-four years old, those guys that wrote me the letters, I was using a lot of photographs back then, and all of them wrote me, and they said stop using photographs, but see, they could tell from my paintings that I was using photographs, so paint from life figures that everybody wants you to go to college, and they have you paint the figure or draw the figure from life. That’s the hardest thing in the world to do. You shouldn’t be doing that, but you can draw still lives, could paint still lives. So, once you spend 10 years doing that painting from life, you will have so much here that then you can go back and utilize photographs. But I still paint from life a lot.
Olya Konell 1:21:42
Yeah, I need to do more of that. This is such a good reminder. Christine says this has been a marvelous session. Thank you so much. Another artist said, paint from memory. Yeah,
Tim Tyler 1:21:57
I have painting from memory. I’m inspired from memory, but I find that memory is fallible, and I will recreate a memory, and then I have more concrete, tangible, reliable information that sounds,
Olya Konell 1:22:14
yeah, very good. Well, I am very grateful. Thank you, everybody, for joining us. Thank you, Tim, for taking the time out of your day, and thank you for holding on in the beginning when we were having.. no, no, not, not, not at all. I’ve trust me, I’ve had bloopers, I had my mouse disappear on me, so I couldn’t control my keyboard, and somebody says, “Where’s the cat? You know, so I stuff happens. If you have any little messages you want me to share with Tim, throw them in the chat right now, because I’ll grab the chat recording and I’ll the comments and I’ll send them the email to Tim, so he can review them, or email him if you’d like. This has been fun. I love this.
Tim Tyler 1:22:58
Well, thank you. Good questions, by the way, really good questions.
Olya Konell 1:23:01
Yeah, thank you very much. And with that, I’m going to thank everybody for joining us, and thank you, Tim. I’ll connect with you over email afterwards, and yeah, we’re.. I’m excited. This has been such a good, such a good session. Take care, everybody. Bye, bye, bye.
