[Irish]

OOOPS ... Sorry Mark! I didn't make myself clear.

In laying out the rough sketch of a painting or drawing the 'horizon line' doesn't refer to the actual outline of the horizontal element. It means the straight line across the paper or canvas from which you judge the viewer's eye level. Anything above that line the viewer looks up. Anything on that line the viewer sees at eye level and anything below that line the viewer must look down.

Yes, you are very right! The horizon of the landscape is marked by the small mid-ground hill under the horse's hooves is slanted with the high side to our left and the low to the right.

The visual - eye level - horizon line runs straight across that line as if it were the top line of a glass of water. The water remains level no matter what elements you see through the water. That's because as the viewer you are assumed to be standing on level ground ... the gallery floor ... and not standing say on a stair case where one side of the painting your eye's are higher then the other ... one level line across the canvas at the height of the average viewer's eyes.

What I am saying about the flow lines is exactly what you are saying about tipping the hill horizon and the mountain horizon behind the rearing horse to create the conflict in movement. I learned that to determine how high or low that tip needs to be is predetermined by the flow lines of the overall design.

"A climbing feeling,,upward,,since that's the direction he is going,,up and up,,leading ,,rearing,,power to achieve and conquer....." Exactly!!!!!! That climbing feeling is created by using the flow lines from the far right - off canvas - point to move everything in one direction and create the movement of the eye and the conflict between the horse/man and his surroundings.

Susan

I believe that what I learned about flow lines was not to direct your attention to one specific area but instead to help lead your eyes away from that area so that the viewer sees/looks at the entire work instead of just one spot ???

[doris]

hey this has became a great discussion, with lots of food for thinking... :-) ... i like the idea of bathtub, and the sculpture within emerging, when water drains out... yes, michelangelo might well have worked this way, locally at least, the sculptures he not finished (i also like the different thoughts on this fact :-)) ...and yes, because of the size of his sculptures a roughing out seems very unlikely, you would loose overview very soon... actualy i prefer too, working on a part more than on others, rather than develop the carving in the whole, as it gives me the feeling to create a visual anchor, to which i can fix all other things. the roughing out lets all things float quite a while, which is an advantage, but also gives rise to difficulties in keeping proportions and correct angles, as everything is constantly "movig"...of course, in the small size it really makes better sense to roughout, but the control, at least to me, is greater when not doing that...

as to the weakness of the ankles of the horse...i had an idea, i want to share for consideration...maybe it would work great to first carve horse and napolean in 3d, then carve a separate background, following the ideas in the painting, and then mount the horse on that background, this gives immediately the required strength and...this would let the viewer look from all sides, you would not have distortions, like you have in high reliefs still, but it also would give impression of being very high relief, with additional shadows you not even get by deep undercuts. did you ever notice, that almost every person tries to look "behind" a high relief carving ? well, in the proposed setting these persons would be very delighted surprised...it were kind of the holybloodaltarpiece, that has this sort of arrangement, and while from pictures it not looks that much different from a relif carving, in real it is overwhelming....
... and it is so refreshig to read discussion on composition on a woodcarving forum, :-) :-)

[Ashbys]

You know when the conflict of seeing, understanding , and concept combine into a new world, it is often a scary place. Here a piece that could have been just another carving has changed into a question of understand, and developement. Which for me has been enlightening , and a learning session unlike any I can say I remember.

Susan you and Mark , have given so many new ideas and possibilities of what this can be , that now the consideration of where I will take it too is one of a different concept for me. I have a few things to take my time for the next few days, in that time I am considering what I will do. I may very likely do as we talked about Susan, and start over with a braced piece. But I can not express my thankfulness of both you and Mark's information.

Doris , I did consider your suggestion, the problem would be the mountian rolls away from the work, so I would have to change the background, to attach the support. Which I think would break , the effect I wanted to acheive. But right now it is in the pot for consideration. If I stop here I will be doing things to the carving to highlight the effect of not being unfinished. So much here to soak up.

I still have a lot of work to move the carving either way , many concepts , many thoughts.

[mark yundt]

I don't believe this painter had a problem with keeping the horse and rider separate from the background. And I don't think he had any intention of linking them together in any way as suggested short of using the range to accentuate the movement of the horse. Their isn't any indication that he had to connect the front hooves with the ground in any way.
Also I think any reference to angles outside of the painting can largely be ignored simply because he didn't want your eyes to leave the confines of the triangle itself. You can see this in the way the tail actually is semicircular which connects the base of the imagined triangle to the side of the triangle leading your eye back to the intended focus. Also,,the curve of the hoof to the leg completes the second corner of the triangle to lead from the base to the left side which then again continues up to the focus.Even the mane itself is so directly linear that points in only one direction. The bulk of the mass does fall straight down from the center of his face,,through his arm,down to the legs of the horse,,but here again,,there was no problem balancing him on the fragile looking legs. A painter doesn't have to worry about keeping a mass suspended as a carver does.
Also,,I think the painter even used the ground as a point of reference and termination as the horse is balanced right at the edge of a drop off,,directly beneath the center of mass.
No,,,he knew full well what he was doing and had no problem doing it because it adds to the entire piece. The background just adds to the direction and drama.Being a light color,,dark color etc. is almost irrelevant as it's almost not noticed regardless of color. If that were true the light color of the mountains would then conflict with the light areas of the horse,,,which they don't.
Gary,,,had I known what you intended with the block there would have been other things I would have suggested to solve the problem of weight.This could have been done,,keeping it just as it is,,yet making people wonder how you keep it from falling over. If you do plan on having a background then there are ways to solve that problem as well. If you plan on keeping it as a carving in the round,,there are relatively simple ways to accomplish that too without too much fuss of rebar ,going through the body and such.

[Ashbys]

Well , I have decided excatly what I am going to do , and as I expected it will be a bit twisted but I think it will combine all the information given and correct the weight issue in a way that will most unique. Now I have lots of new things to learn to make it work .

Thanks my friends !

Garry

[Ashbys]

Sometimes you wonder if the process if worth the fight. But for those interested , these are a few update pics. I have released the sword and boot from the side of the horse, I have started locating the hat.

And I will tell you , for something as simple as a hat finding the right information on his Bicorne hat took a bit of time. Finding the correct hat for the period was more involved than finding information on his boots ...jeeze.

Anyway started detailing the tail, and some work on the blanket , waist line and hips , opps getting carried away .. anyway here is the update, and as always comments are always welcome .

Ash

[doris]

i have no constructive comments to make in this state, i can see you search, and find... amazing is to me that you already started detailing the tail for example. the carving in whole is to my eye still early state, many large forms still not clearly defined, and if you want later shift the tail, you need cut away all that detailing work...but the way you work, i see your confidense in doing so too, and michelangelo did that sort of thing too. so you are in good company...thanks for sharing

[Irishman]

Still here reading the post and learning. The stage of releasing various sections of the carving is becoming more and more evident. At some point, we'll see a dramatic tranformation occuring when certain parts start showing. Your a patient man Ash...but the end result will be something else. So your endorsing Coke now are you!
Patrick

[Irish]

I am not trying to dreg up this art conversation again. I have had some inquiries through the email about my interpretation and especially my definitions. So .... for those couple of people ...

I had someone drop me an email about our wonderful discuss on the
interpretation of Jacques-Louis David's "Napoleon at St. Bernard". I think they
were looking for a definitions of terms that I threw around in this

First, foremost! An interpretation of a work of art is just that ... it's how
you see what is in the art, how you think the artist did what they did and what tools they may have used to get to where they got. Interpretations are neither right nor wrong. How could they be as they are based only on that one person's view point, experience and attitudes.

I came to this particular discussion first as an oil painter myself. So I
looked at David's work from that view point ... color, tonal value, visual
weight, visual horizon lines. Then I began translating that into what problems
the painting might create for the wood carver.

Now I do not want to or mean to put words in Mark's mouth as he clearly can
speak for himself. What I read in Mark's comments are just as good, valid and strong. I believe they come from the view point of a wood carver first!
So where I am the oil painter going to a wood carving Mark sounds to me to be the wood carver going to a wood carving and that combination makes for a good discussion!

OK ... a few art and art interpretation definitions. I have picked up a copy
of Jacques-Louis David's "Stanislaw" as a comparison work. That's the first
image. Both show a full bodied man mounted on a horse of the same breed at a three-quarter turned view.Below is how I see these paintings and that means nothing more than my view point toward what underlying structures I see. Others may see something totally different!!!!!! My opinion and interpretation comes from a painter's view point.

1. napoleon_shape_line.jpg

There is indeed a triangle shape to the main elements (man and horse) in
Napoleon. I have marked the triangle as my eye sees it in the yellow. That
triangle could easily be drawn larger or small. The point, for me, is that a
master painter will contain the main elements of the work into an area.

That very triangle also emphasizes the flow lines of the painting. These are
lines that are rough guides for placement of the elements. Flow line guide the eye through the painting. If, in my opinion, the artist only wanted you to see Napoleon's face or only Napoleon on the horse David would never have bothered to go to all the work of painting the rock ledge, small ridge, background people , mountain edge or sky. He could have easily made the background a dark neutral tone as was a common portrait practice at the time.

So I think he wants me to look at everything in the painting and used those flow lines to show me other points in the work.

In Stanislaw the shape is a rectangle, also shown in yellow. The flow lines
are a grid work of vertical and horizontal lines that, in my opinion, really
complement the rectangle shape. Where it seems to me that Napoleon flows from a focal point this painting it a grid.

2. napoleon_gallery_level.jpg

An oil artist needs to decide where a painting will be hung in the pencil
sketch time of the prep work. The height of the painting from the gallery
floor is one aspect that they use. "Napoleon at St. Bernard" is 97" tall ...
that's a pretty tall canvas. It was meant to be hung on very high walls inside a palace or public arena.

These two things are a couple of tools that an artist used to determine the
horizon line of the painting. I am not talking about the element on the visual
horizon of the landscape ... I am talking about where your eye level is to the
canvas. On Napoleon it is around the mid-point in the horse's back leg.
How do I know this ... ? I can see the underside of anything above that point as the underside of the tail, the horse's belly and the bottom of Napoleon's shoe. When I look down from that point I see the top of the rock ledge and the top of the horse's hooves.

In Stanislaw the horizon line seems to be at his knee. Above his knee I can
see the a little of his bottom in the saddle and below his knee I see the top
of his boots and the top of the dog's head. So this painting was not meant to be hung as high on a wall as Napoleon.

As a wood carver most of our work is seen in a downward manor. That's the little man in black holding the cup. And here is where I believe one of the
problems in making this painting into a carving comes. Garry is carving an
image worked from the measurements of the painting. Therefore his carving is worked from a 'look up' attitude for a 'look down' work.

3. napoleon_7to1.jpg

The human body can be divided into 'head units'. The height of the head from
the top of the head to the underside of the chin becomes the ruler for the rest of the body. Garry noted that he used the horse's head as his measurement.

David used a 7 to 1 ratio throughout his career. It appears to me that this is his standard through all of his works, some artists use an 8 to 1 ratio. You can really see that in the Stanislaw painting. It is a very clear ruler with one unit for the head, two units for the body, two units for the hip to knee and two more for the lower leg.

When you take that 7 to 1 ratio to Napoleon it "appears" to work ... but there is a problem! That ratio only works on the front side of Napoleon, not on the back side. Napoleon has an extra head unit inserted in the hip area. Instead of the top of Napoleon's hip sitting just under the waist line it sits nearly one head unit lower.

David hid this extra head unit with the use of the ornamentation at Napoleon's waist that flows onto his upper legs. He pulls your eye to the front line of Napoleon's body with the ornamentation and away from that excess area.

That causes a problem for the carver. First someone mentioned that Napoleon's lower leg and foot look too big. They are not, they are in proportion. But the appear to be distorted because your eye can't correlate their proportions to the proportions in the waist and upper body area. The lower leg looks out of proportion because the upper leg has been disguised with the ornamentation.

Your eye thinks that the area that it can fully see is the problem when the
real problem lies in the added distance between the hip and the waist.
That is how I see this painting as a painter, others will have other views.
That's the fun of any art interpretation conversation - Everyone is Right! But
everyone has different view points that help make me think

Susan

[Irish]

Why??? Why is Napoleon's head too large? Why is his front hand too big? And why did David give his waist-hip area that extra head unit?
Propaganda!!!!!

Jacques-Louis David is noted in history as being the "Dictator of Propaganda
Art". Those who start art movements are usually called Fathers, but apparently David had a mean, nasty and aggressive personality. His contemporaries therefore titled him as a dictator. Appropriately he was first an artist for the Court of King Louis XVI but then joined the French Revolution and was one of the signers for the order to execute Luis XVI. Later he was a member of the group that cohered Louis XVII (hope I am getting the Louis numbers right) to confess to incest with his mother the Queen so that they could behead him too.

Quote: In 1791 ... The Bourbon monarchy was destroyed by the French people in 1792 it would be restored after Napoleon, then destroyed again with the Restoration of the House of Bonaparte. When the new National Convention held. Its first meeting, David was sitting with his friends Jean-Paul Marat and Robespierre. In the Convention, David soon earned a nickname "ferocious terrorist"." (1)

Quote: "As a person, David could be petty, graceless, and abrasive. Intensely
competitive, he was confident and even boastful of his talent. "My style of
painting is nothing less than brilliant," he wrote a friend in 1794." (6)

"Napoleon at St. Bernard" is pure propaganda!

Here's it's history:

Quote: "In 1799, during his Syrian campaign, Napoleon's forces stormed Jaffa
(now part of Tel Aviv) and defeated the Turkish forces there. In the following
days, his men ran amok, raping and killing thousands of civilians. Napoleon
himself ordered 3,000 Turkish soldiers who had surrendered to be slaughtered.
Then, when the Turks were on the verge of counterattack, Napoleon retreated and left behind some 50 of his own men who had been stricken with plague, after ordering them to be poisoned so that they could not be taken prisoner (French doctors refused to obey the order). (4)

"Napoleon, relying so much on the morale of his troops and the popular support of the French people, could have been badly hurt by these horrifying incidents. His response was to commission Antoine-Jean Gros to paint Napoleon Bonaparte" (1)

"Visiting the Plague Stricken at Jaffa. Thus Napoleon ensured that the most
enduring image of the Syrian campaign was the suffering of the French troops
and his sympathetic tending to their needs." (3)

Quote: "This was Napoleon's instruction to Jacques-Louis David. Not yet
Emperor, Napoleon needed to create a historical legitimacy for his becoming
absolute ruler. One way was through the story of his leading an army across the Alps - and reminding the world that he was just the third general in history to do so, after Charlemagne and Hannibal. Napoleon refused to sit for the portrait and did not care if David achieved a good likeness - although he did insist that the artist take great care to paint his horse accurately.
The galling part of the story is that David took dictation in this manner and
yet succeeded in making Napoleon Crossing the Saint Bernard a magnificent work of art. The only possible improvement David could have made is to portray Napoleon as he had actually made the journey - on a mule." (1)

---


So to make Napoleon go from just a man, bigger then a general, more then a king and into a god-like emperor David made his face larger, his hand larger and then cut the drawing of Napoleon's body at the waist line so that he could move Napoleon's head higher into the painting.
Then he gave the painting a very low horizon line so that you had to look up,
really look up to see Napoleon's face .... Big Grin!!!!

So we have a painting done by a ferocious terrorist Dictator of Propaganda Art of a "God" that would be Emperor,a compassionate commander that conquered the Alps and did not order the poisoning of his own men or the murder of a surrendered enemy ... Ha Ha Ha!

I promise I am done witht his. Just wanted to answer those email questions. And if you are interested you aught to ask Garry about Mules in Battle ...


Jean Auguste Dominque Ingres' painting of Mapoleon Bonapartes
References:
(1) Wilipedia: Jacques-Louis David
Jacques-Louis David - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(2) WebMuseum, Paris: Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825)
WebMuseum: David, Jacques-Louis
(3) ArtCyclopedia - Hacques-Louis David
Napoleon Bonaparte at the St. Bernard Pass, by Jacques-Louis David
(4) Art-Cyclopedia - Notorious Portraits
November Feature: Notorious Portraits
(5) Jacques-Louis David: Empire to Exile (Getty Exhibitions)
Jacques-Louis David: Empire to Exile (Getty Exhibitions)
(6) Jacques_louis David and the Art of Propaganda
Jacques-Louis David and the Art of Propaganda
(7) Napoleon I of France, Wikipedia.org, Napoleon's Height
Napoleon I of France - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(8) Napoleon Complex, Wikipedia.org
Napoleon complex - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Susan