Frank Webb: Design Before Color

One of my favorite artists is Frank Webb. His art embodies humorous freedom where nothing is really straight, and his bold colors remind me of a vivid dreamscape. It was my honor to interview Frank a couple of years ago, and that interview led me to invite him to submit an article to the New Palette Magazine, of which I am the most recent editor.

In the article, which I have included here, Frank takes us through the many stages of creating a painting. It's an article that I think is top-notch and which I believe would benefit us all in terms of deconstructing the process of painting. Here’s the article:

Design Before Color

Because color is perceived instantly, it is inclined to gain first place in a work order. Color is pure quality, it enthralls. But, before color must come design. Consider the human body. There is flesh and bone under the skin. When painting, line is bone, values are the flesh, and color is skin. The marks made on paper or canvas are elements of design. The next few pages deal with these elements. Design is the gravity that holds a painting together. By observation, anyone can learn to draw things, but design deals not with things but with relationship among things. Design is a tribunal in that it enables one to judge their marks while also providing a sense of ease from the security of design awareness.

Value

This monochromatic preliminary sketch was one of several from which I chose to make a finished painting. The eye is drawn to light and dark. So, be sure to utilize tonal values to catch the eye. While color helps differentiate one shape from another, the light-dark scheme is what projects the most important contrast. To simplify a painting, I design with four values: white, light middle, dark middle, and dark. Brilliant color resides in the two middle values, not in the lights and darks. 

Shape

Shape is the sine qua non of painting. This painting has a dominance of triangular shapes. A good shape should be longer in one direction and should interlock with its neighboring shapes. A subject often dictates a certain shape dominance, but if not, the painter should provide this quality as a ploy. A poor shape may be improved by stretching, slanting, or interlocking with neighbor shapes. The shapes in this small painting resulted from speedy work with a two-inch flat brush. 

Size

Every painting should have three sizes: small, medium, and large. Having these three sizes offers a feeling of completeness. For the sake of dominance, one area or shape should be the largest. Fill the area with the subject, e.g. Caesar on a Roman coin. Dominance is character. There is no room in a painting for optical democracy. One size prevails. An exception for size dominance is a checkerboard. But, perhaps that scheme can be regarded as a texture rather than a pattern. 

Direction

Let’s say that there are only three directions: horizontal, vertical and slanted. A painting achieves unity when one of those directions is dominant over the others. For variety, all three directions are needed. The vertical suggests dignity; the horizontal dominance expresses stability, while the slanting direction declares energy. There are very few horizontals in this painting. I like to place a few horizontals and verticals so there is a relationship to the borders of the painting. 

Line

Here, line does not refer to line drawing, but to boundaries of shapes. There are only two varieties of boundaries, the curved and the straight. If one type does not dominate, then take charge and provide one. Curves make straights more beautiful and vice versa. A painting with all curves is flabby and one with all straights is brittle. It is good practice to make a line drawing with a specific focus on this concern. Christopher Schink’s works are terrific examples of this concept. 

Texture

Someone once said, “Texture is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” Texture is often hauled in when other elements are feeble. Texture can be the icing on the cake if the cake is otherwise substantial. It also adds a tactile dimension to the visual. The entire painting can be a texture. Small spots dominate a Georges Seurat painting in the pointillist manner, while a Toulouse-Lautrec poster is made of simple, flat shapes. Texture may also be used to separate one area or item from the others. 

Color

The most attractive attribute of color is interaction in their combination. In this sense no one color is more beautiful than another. A chaotic jumble of colors is unified when one of them is made dominant (e pluribus unum). If failing to create color dominance, another option is to go for plan B, a temperature dominance: a cool dominance or a warm one. Having successfully fulfilled the preceding six steps, time now may be exclusively devoted to color. 

Wrap Up

Most landscape subjects have many parts requiring a multifarious design, but even this simple figure painting has a dominant shape and also dominance of value, size, direction, line, texture, and color. I call these the nouns of design, but there are also eight verbs of design: unity, contrast, dominance, repetition, alternation, harmony, balance, and gradation.

For information on these, go online to artshow.com/webb to order Frank’s books, Dynamic Composition, and also his new coffee table book, Frank Webb’s, Life And Art.