Exploring Nature’s Greatest Secret
What can I discover if I make a painting to explores this nature’s greatest secret, Golden Ratio? I made this rule to my experiment, that the frame, the placement of the objects, and the objects themselves have to follow a proportion of 1 x 1.618. I cannot wait to see what the nature will reveal!
Prepare
Buying such a large canvas for my casual experiment is not cost efficient. So I decided to make one by myself. My thought was, how hard could that be? Started from a lot of measuring, calculating, and planning, I finally got not only all the dimensions figured out, but also optimized around the available fabrics and the wood I can buy from the stores.
Making the Frame
Started from make the wood frame I went to a hardware store and got two piece of 8 feet long 1 x 2 wood, cut in a place that divided each into 5 feet and 3 feet sections, yes, 36 x 1.618 ~= 60, golden ratio. Nailed all four corners together, a frame is raising from the dead wood!
Attaching the Fabric
Shouldn’t be so hard right? Just need to make the surface smooth.
Keep the Surface Smooth
I didn’t realize how hard it was to keep the surface smooth. You have to apply force evenly to all different directions. A little unfairness will cause a tiny winkle, which will be seen from very faraway. So I kept stretching it from around, until it was all smooth…
The result …
As the result, with the painful fingers from stretching the fabric, I got an hour-glass shaped canvas by over tighten the center part (the professional canvas makers reclaimed their job!), and, even worse, I found I had mis-calculated some of the measurements. And it was a cascade effect, one error trickle down to another. So the nature’s greatest secret is still a well kept secret … and I have to go back to the drawing board again, to start all over!
Still hang it up on the wall. It reminds me, perfection hasn’t accomplished yet, and it may takes many more iterations, or the nature may never reveal its secret!
A Second Try (un-golden-ration)
The wide screen TV prompted me to do this experiment. I didn’t follow the golden ratio for the canvas size, the object placement, and object and proportions. But I think visually this better. Now, how to explain this un-golden-ration experiment? How should I describe my term “visually better?” Is this judgement common to everyone?
After the un-golden-ration experiment, I researched how others interprets Golden Ratio, my understanding of its application might be too narrow? If so, where the flexibility margin?
I did a gold rush. For the second experiment, even the canvas proportion did not follow the golden-ratio, there are still a lot of gold from the original design rules!
After thoughts …
In stead of thinking the golden ration in size, Is it possible to use it for color’s value, or intensity? For example, if a picture needs two types of color blue, can I use the same blue mix with white or black with the golden ratio? For example, in the above painting, the lake uses Cobalt blue mixed with one portion of white, and the sky uses the same blue with 1.162 portion of white?