Three Types of Edges and Where to Use Them in Your Painting
Artist Sarah Sedwick’s (Ep. 22) loose realism style is a dance. She wants you to know when she’s painting a plate of lemons. She’s not trying to abstract that realism completely out. However, she also doesn’t want to show you everything.
"When you come to photo realistic painting,” she says, “it's all spelled out for you. Yes, it's impressive. It's amazing. To look at the patience the artist must have shown alone impresses the hell out of me… but there's not a lot for my brain to do when I come to those paintings.”
The hallmark of Sedwick’s loose realism style comes down to something as simple (or not simple) as her varied use of edges. We’re going to take a look at the three types of edges Sedwick uses in her paintings and how you might use them in yours.
WHAT ARE THE THREE TYPES OF EDGES IN A PAINTING
No matter your medium, you have access to three types of edges in your paintings: hard, soft, and lost.
Hard edges are when you have two shapes side by side and everything has a clean hard line. Soft edges are a bit fuzzed. Lost edges are when you can’t distinguish between where one shape stops and the adjacent on begins.
Let’s look at how Sedwick appraoches the three types of edges (hard, soft and lost edges).
USING HARD EDGES
Hard edges, says Sedwick, just sort of happen.
“It's almost like they make themselves and my job is to control them,” she says.
"When you come to photo realistic painting,” Sedwick says, “it's all spelled out for you. Yes, it's impressive. It's amazing. To look at the patience the artist must have shown alone impresses the hell out of me… but there's not a lot for my brain to do when I come to those paintings”
Hard edges are made of crisp lines. These are the easiest to make in all the media. And they have an important role to play... namely drawing the viewer’s eye.
A hard eye mimics what the eye will create when something is being looked at. If you look at an object on the table, it will have hard edges. You’ll be able to see details. Everything in your periphery is soft and fuzzy.
Now turn your head again and refocus on something else. Very quickly everything comes into focus with hard edges.
Hard edges, in our own brains, means that we are paying attention to something specific. It’s the focal point. So artists, especially those working in realism, use hard edges to tell the viewer, “This is where you are looking.”
In a painting, especially one filled with different kinds of edges, hard edges will draw your viewers’ eyes. Many artists use hard edges (and high value contrast) as the main focal area.
LOST EDGES
Lost edges, says Sedwick, really give her paintings the look of her work. She is always on the lookout for opportunities to create lost edges.
For example, if she has a still life painting with two lemons and the light halves of each overlap.
“I can paint those into each other,” she says of the light part of the lemons. “And I don't have to show you a line your brain solves that puzzle. And that's what makes loose realism fun to look at.”
Because of the importance of her lost edges, Sedwick is thinking about them very early in the set up.
“Ideally, I...would start when I'm setting up the still life. I might go ooh, there's like a really good opportunity for a loss edge, you know, keep that as I'm monkeying around with things. But mostly, I'm discovering those opportunities as I'm doing either my value study or my under painting.”
Sedwick’s entire process is set up to give her time to discover opportunities to create lost edges. Lost edges are what adds a sense of mystery and painterlyness to her work.
SOFT EDGES
Sedwick decides her hard edges and then finds opportunities for lost edges and everything else becomes a soft edge.
However, not all these soft edges are treated the same. She’s going to make some edges softer and some less soft. This will give viewers a sense of depth.
For example, soft edges at the back of her picture plane are going to be much softer than the areas at the front of her picture plane. This will also help direct her viewer’s eye and let them know when they are getting closer to the focal point, which will have harder edges to attract them.
NAVIGATING BRAIN OVERWHELM
“When we're actually painting, we're running like five programs in our head at once,” says Sedwick. “It's really overwhelming, and you aren't going to have the RAM to pay attention to every little thing.”
Sedwick understands that painting overwhelms the brain. This is where her process comes in. She’s set up a system of working through her subject that gives her time to understand the pieces in play. She’s not rushing herself to make all the decisions all at once.
With her edges, she begins thinking about them in the set up. She’s looking for opportunities to create lost edges as she arranges her still life objects. Then she has more time to think about them when she’s doing her thumbnails and laying down her underpainting. She then gives herself more time to think about them as she’s creating her set palette.
Sedwick’s entire process is set up to give her time to discover opportunities to create lost edges.
All of this gives her time before the chaos of the painting itself begins.
And when she discovers opportunities for the perfect edge, she makes sure to write it down. She leaves marks in her underpainting that remind her which edge she planned to create at that particular place.
For Sedwick, this process is now secondary. So sure, it means her paintings take a bit longer to paint but she’s found it’s more than worth it. In the end, she’s able to create paintings that welcome the viewer in with a bit of mystery. Paintings that are a joy to look at.
“When you come to a painting where some things are implied...and not everything is spelled out for you…you get to connect the dots. And that makes these looser paintings fun to look at.”
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