I am your deadline-pushing host, Marco Bucci.

Let's get right into it, shall we?

Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin says, I laugh when people ask if I ever get writer's block.

Writer's block is my default position.

In this episode, we'll be looking at good shapes, a topic that can be found in the broader chapter of readability.

We read pictures in much the same way as we read words, like how a series of abstract markings form a sequence of words which together provide meaning, a painting does just the same thing, only with shapes instead.

And good shapes are what build good paintings.

I consider this painting by J.C.

Leyendecker to be a good painting, and one of the main reasons I think that is because it's chock-full of what I consider to be good shapes.

But I don't want to get ahead of myself, you might be wondering, what exactly do I mean by shapes?

Well, probably, the kind of shape we're all familiar with is this one, the outline or Silhouettes are maybe the first kind of shape we recognize as children.

But when we're painting, we have to deal with many, many more shapes than just a silhouette.

Like, for example, this shape, responsible for defining some of the blue light that's falling on his face.

Or this shape, which contains some of the warm light that's coming from that match.

This shape actually straddles two things, the cast shadow of the ear and the sideburns.

Here's a shape of light on the underside of the brim of the hat.

And here's its counterpart shape for the shadow of the same object.

Here's a zippy little shape of highlight on the chin.

And here's that same shape, only inverted, making up the eyebrow.

Okay, please follow me over to this painting by Walter Everett.

This one's a little more subtle, but let's do the same shape isolation exercise.

Here are three shapes responsible for ambient light falling on the woman's dress.

Here are two kind of pointy shapes responsible for patches of the landscape.

And here's a neighboring shape also responsible for part of the landscape.

And let's quickly zoom in to catch a few more soft shapes like this one here that belongs to the side plane of the woman's face.

This subtle shape of light on the man's sleeve.

And finally, this shape of shadow under the woman's jaw.

Okay, before we move further, how many of you have heard this old adage?

Those three words often get passed off as wisdom, but to me they're a little cryptic.

I mean, if painting is like a recipe that calls for shapes, values, edges, and color, when we mix those ingredients, what exactly do we need less of?

Try to keep that question in mind as we continue this lesson.

Alright, so these are all the shapes we isolated a minute ago, plus just a few more to fill out the page.

And I've rescaled them all so they appear now at roughly the same size.

So let's look at these and see if we can come up with some observations.

Is there anything here that jumps out at you?

Maybe the biggest thing I notice is that these shapes are abstract.

That is, by themselves, they don't have any inherent meaning.

Even though a moment ago they looked like brims of hats or light and shadows on faces or bits of the landscape, when you see them by themselves like this, they don't actually look like any of those things.

In a weird way, it's almost like the painter is speaking a different language than the picture.

Alright, let's keep our detective hats on and make a few more observations.

How about how simple all those shapes are?

They're not intimidating.

I'm sure any one of us here could draw any of those shapes.

But why is painting so hard then?

Hmm.

Before we continue this investigation, I think we should take some notes.

When I saw these shapes for the first time, I knew they were trouble.

One thing was certain, though.

They must be good shapes because they were part of good paintings.

But they were just so abstract.

They also looked so simple.

So easy to draw.

Like any one of us could do it.

Hmm.

There's just something so, so intentional about them.

The design is so clear.

And look at this.

Even if we zoom out in Photoshop, the shapes still, they still read clearly.

Even at a distance.

It's starting to come together.

But I still need more.

Ah, that was a great lunch.

And now it's back to the video.

And hey, who left this notebook here?

When you're painting, try and think of these three basic marks.

C curves, S curves, and straights.

With C curves, S curves, and straights, you can draw or paint any shape.

And sticking to just those three will help you become conscious of exactly the shape you're making.

And now looking back at these shapes, we can do some further analysis.

Take the shape on the top right, for example.

I really like how this shape is designed.

It's a graceful shape made by essentially two C curves, each having a slightly different flow.

Here's a much sharper shape.

And predictably, it's made mostly of straights.

And these two little C curves help break up that pattern and give it maybe a little more interest.

This is an interesting shape.

One side is a very simple S curve.

And the other side is more complex, made of smaller straights and C curves.

You know, I really wish there was some kind of superior art authority board that could certify your shapes.

But there isn't.

You have to be your own shape detective.

And these four criteria are a good place to start.

You see, it's all too easy to neglect this lesson and make a shape that's overly self-important.

Fill a canvas with those, and it feels like a clogged drain.

You can evaluate good shapes by how well they retain their design when they fill up a canvas.

So if I catch myself making a shape like this, I'll try and redesign it using C curves, S curves, and straights to bring out its inherent identity a little better.

And now that I've arrived at a simple statement, maybe I can design back in some of that complexity.

And don't fall into the trap of simply trying to copy from nature.

Nature is under no obligation to provide good shapes.

That's your job.

Sometimes nature will spoon feed you with simple, readable, drawable shapes.

But most of the time, yeah, there's going to be some work to do.

And from personal experience, it's about turning shapes into less so that together they can communicate more.

So cheer up, Aaron Sorkin.

You're not alone.

We painters may not have writer's block.

We have, I don't know, shape dysfunction.

But let's find comfort in the fact that we all suffer together.

And we can work on it together, too.

OK?

Yeah, that's kind of better.

Well, good luck with that.

The rest of us are moving to part two.

This self-portrait by John Singer Sargent looks very sophisticated.

And it is.

But I want to show you how with good shape design as the backbone of your painting, you, too, can aspire to this level.

I'm going to set up our workspace.

And the first thing I'm going to do in this study is break down the shapes.

The biggest shapes are usually the most obvious, like this piece of light that covers most of his face.

Here is a gigantic shadow shape responsible for the entire shadow side.

Also, just a quick note.

Look at our canvas.

I am not trying to use any values yet.

I am just looking at shape.

So here's a real simple shape for the hair.

Here is a scattering of halftone shapes.

Halftones are generally responsible for bridging the light into shadow.

These are the highlight shapes on the head.

This shape actually does look like an eye.

And that's because it's one shape for the entire eye socket and structure of the eyeball.

Here's a very simple shape for the collar in light.

This handcuff-looking shape is the beard in shadow.

And last two, the shadow of the collar and the beard in light.

Before I move on with this demonstration, remember earlier in this video I said that it's almost like the painter speaks a different language than the picture?

Doing a study like this reinforces what I mean.

As a painter, you have to train your eye to see not the object literally, but the individual shapes and the design of those shapes that form it.

Maybe like how a chef might look at a dish and immediately begin to see the ingredients that went into it.

OK, moving ahead.

Witness the magic as I now reconstruct those shapes, but in the correct order and with correct values.

And what we have now, ladies and gentlemen, is the painting.

It's not finished, but the critical information is all there now.

And my goal for this lesson is to give you an appreciation of the importance each of those shapes have.

To further drive this point home, let's zoom out on our study.

As you'll remember from part one, it's largely those good shapes that are pulling the weight and making this picture read.

And I want to also quickly say, yes, values are very important as well.

But I do think that shapes and values are two separate lessons.

So stay tuned for a future episode on values.

And speaking of episodes, what I'm doing now is recalling what we talked about in episode three, about brushwork and edges.

All I'm doing is taking the shapes that I just laid out and determining what the edge is between each shape.

So you see, you can compartmentalize these processes, shapes first and then edges later.

And I do recommend studying this way, even if at first it means tracing shapes directly off the source.

Tracing has a dirty connotation sometimes.

But when it comes to study, especially if you're new to this, tracing and analyzing shapes off a painting is a great way to familiarize yourself with the language of shapes.

And then you can challenge yourself to this stage of the process, which is determining the edge without losing those strong underlying shapes.

It's very common to see a student start off with decent shapes, but then lose them in the process of, and I don't like this word, blending.

I don't like the word blending because for some reason it seems to capture people's attention more than it deserves.

Your attention should be on shapes, not blending.

In fact, there are many awesome art styles that don't have blending at all.

It's all just hard shapes.

And I guess that's why I place such an importance on shape.

It's because no matter what your style, your shapes play the largest role in quality.

I'd like to take this last moment to talk about how I think learning arts is unique.

And that is when we think of learning, we tend to accept the idea that things start off easy and then get more and more complex over time.

But do these shapes remind you of anything?

They remind me of being in kindergarten and experiencing sheer joy at the concept of shapes.

We used to do everything with shapes.

We cut them out.

We drew them.

We played with them.

We learned all their names.

I think that what lies at the heart of painting is a desire to return to childhood and maybe mix it with some of the life experience we gain as adults.

And that, if you ask me, is quite a profound and beautiful thing to strive for.