A criticism that often gets made to the work of an artist is the confusion created by tangent lines or edges in their image (if it’s representaional.) Personally, I think too much is made of this point, like a singer who hits the wrong key in an otherwise flawless performance, which I can excuse. Nobody’s perfect, and sometimes it’s best if they don’t appear to be. However, I can also agree that it can be distracting, and easily avoided.
I recently posted the image above to an illustration art group. It’s a story illustration by one of the great artists of the 20th Century, Coby Whitmore. A friend made a comment that he wished the artist had drawn it so that it didn’t look like her left arm was deformed, or that a hand was growing out of her elbow. This is due to how the edges of the shapes line up, causing a visual confusion of their spatial relationships. I don’t want to presume why a professional artist such as Whitmore made these decisions, so I’ll just show how I would make changes to avoid those tangents, with the benefit of starting from his finished layout.
Firstly, this topic shows the importance of doing sketches and studies before you start painting what will be the final piece. Notice also that this appears to be painted in watercolor and/or thin gouache. Were it in acrylic or oils, painting corrections would be easier. As it is, I would want to make as few repaints as possible. If I start off with simple thumbnail sketches, it makes it easier to catch these tangent problems early, or more specifically to make an image that reads properly. As I said earlier, tangents can be useful in your design, but you have to make them look intentional, and not negatively distracting. In the sketch I made above, I changed her pose slightly by bending her left arm with her hand touching his wrist to avoid the possible tangents there entirely. I also transferred the gesture of her left hand over to her right to keep the same body language. Even after doing small line sketches like this, I would follow the sketches with some quick color studies as well to be sure that the colors and shape patterns were not also making the composition confusing.
Of course hindsight is always a luxury, but perhaps I had gone too far before I caught the problem area – then what? I certainly don’t want to start all over again, especially, if this is an illustration piece that is on a tight deadline, so repainting her pose is not ideal. One simple fix would be to repaint only the problem area of her arm and his wrist. In the image above I broke the curving lines of his knee and the bottom of her arm, and repainted the her sleeve to look like it had been rolled up to her elbow.
Another option would be to just change the color of her blouse. The light pink in the original looks too similar to the flesh tones, adding to the confusion of his hand seeming to be attached to her arm. Giving her blouse a darker value and color change helps separate the shapes more clearly. If I had to deliver the art quickly, this would be the fastest solution, and sometimes speed is necessary. There’s still some tangent issues with that sleeve, but that could be repainted as I did in the previous image.
While we’re talking about the art of Coby Whitmore, here’s one of my favorites by him. You’ll likely spot several more tangent edges and intersecting lines in this one, but they all read clearly due to the patterning of colors and values in the separate shapes.
Artwork by D. B. Clemons 