Spring Cleaning. Early lessons in art theory

With the extra time now spent in the house because of lockdown, and continual rain, we have been spring cleaning. A leak in our roof meant we had to clear out our small store room. Whilst going through some boxes I came across my art homework book from Salford Grammar School, from when I was eleven. 
I was surprised to see the range of art theory work I had completed. Writing in my last blog about what artwork may have inspired me, I was interested to see how many, without remembering having done them, I still used in my art today.
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Here, I was looking at Composition in paintings, starting with the horizon line and then looking at how this effected the composition, examples of what was considered a bad layout and how it could be improved.
This was about fifty nine years ago and nowadays present day art teachers may consider it  to be an old fashioned way of looking at things. Today it could be seen to be more beneficial to break these early rules.





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Moving on, homeworks were set studying Relative Proportion, including the spaces left around an object. This was to break the monotony of the composition.


Following on from this, we looked at what was described as the pleasant relationship of objects and how they relate to each other.

​We moved on to looking at the golden section, a means of placing important items in what was considered its optimal place. This layout is often found in works by many of the great masters from the past.


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Many other subjects were covered, including Line, Tone, Colour, Texture and even Emotion in a composition. Some homeworks being more successful than others.

This activity was based on Tone, the degrees of light and shade. It was meant to show how two different colours could have the same tonal value. Some worked better than others.





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This homework book is one of the only surviving records of my art lessons at the start of high school. I was surprised at how good my basic grounding was in the subject and feel lucky to have such a good start in my art journey. I went on to study it for O level, A level and at College in Leeds.
I believe a great deal of this knowledge must have helped and influenced me in my artwork that followed and I am grateful for the advice and grounding covered by the teaching staff at my school. 
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​( I noticed my handwriting was no better in those days as well!) LOL