Design principles for wood carving 4

Arabesque is the rule that every line in an ornament curves and everything connects to everything. I call it a really important law. I know it sounds weird, but look at my flowers and try to find one straight line in them. There is none. Still, every part connects to every other part. In art history, an arabesque is decoration made of scrolling, interlacing leaves and tendrils.

This lesson is a chalk talk at the board. I stand there with a class in the room, draw one acanthus leaf and later a flower, and keep asking where each line goes. By the end you will know where the letter S goes on a leaf, what a T stop does to the way the brain reads a design, and why a leaf's center line never sits in the center.

The rules from the board, short

• Nothing in the ornament is straight.
• Carry any curl past its end in your mind, and it should come back and connect to the design.
• A small letter S under a growing leaf tells you it grows, even with no stem.
• Two movements should never make a T.
• The center line of a leaf sits on 60 40, not in the center.
• Repeat a curve at a different size, tapered from its starting point, so it never runs parallel.

What does everything connects to everything mean on a leaf?

Every movement has a swirl. A swirl doesn't run off somewhere by itself. Take the end of one curl on my acanthus and carry the movement on in your head, past the place where the chalk stops. The line falls back into the same movement. Somewhere it has to connect with the overall picture.

Which means I have to make the decision about my curvature, and I show the class one direction the curve cannot take, because it would never connect. That would be weird. Stupid, not logical, and modern, if you want to call that art. The line I did draw circles back, so the parts connect to each other. That is arabesque. I also call it a law of swirls around, if you wish.

Movement, curve, no straight line. And if something doesn't make sense, you have to fix it.

Where does the letter S go on a leaf?

To push the arabesque further, I add a small arc to one section of the acanthus and call that movement a letter S. It carries on the main movement. The S still supports the overall idea, but it makes clear where the point is supposed to go.

Next I ask the class which side the S belongs on, after everything I just explained. On this leaf the main part grows up while the antagonist falls downhill. Should the arc go on this side or that one? Absolutely on the bottom. I put that S there to support the big idea, and while people don't know that, the brain reads it absolutely differently.

Acanthus is just one case. I try to put that letter S on any type of leaf. With it in place, I know a leaf grows up even without its stem, and I know another one grows down just because of that letter S. In every little detail it matters.

How does a T stop break the arabesque?

Another rule goes with arabesque, and it is a simple one. No T stops. I chalk a letter T on the board so the class can see the shape. Even when you don't see that T, if you carry two movements on and they would cross somewhere, even out in the empty space, the brain reads it differently. So I have to understand my overall movement.

I come back to this in the furniture panel course, first on what a T stop is in ornament and then on the T stop you cannot see. Here it takes less than a minute.

How does arabesque work inside an acanthus leaf?

I redraw the acanthus going on a Baroque movement and count its divisions with the class. Three or five, never four or six, because it is a Fibonacci sequence. The main idea still goes back to it.

Inside those three main divisions you usually see three other divisions, and the spacing between them lands on one of the golden sections.

Then I draw a border line around the leaf, a line you usually never see. Calculate point against point. Say that line is 10 inches, and I ask the class to guess the next one down to the lower point. The answer I give on the board is 1.619. The golden ratio itself, for reference, works out to about 1.618 when you carry the decimals further.

Did you read that in any book? No book is going to show that to you, I tell them. Someone asks about George Walker's book. My answer is that it still doesn't show the logic behind the Fibonacci sequence on that level, and nobody explains that logic. So you are the first ones.

Usually I call that border a boat shape, or a leaf shape, like a fisher's boat but a twisted one.

Why is one space bigger than the other?

Look at the spaces too. If this space is 1 unit, that space is going to be 1.61 units, and you can divide them in square inches and calculate. Can you see dynamic symmetry in it? I compare it to human eyes, since one eye is bigger than the other and everybody has different eyes.

This is part of why I believe in a Creator. Without Wisdom it is impossible to make what we see around us, even on a level like that.

Where does a leaf's center line sit?

Take a look at where the eyes of the acanthus fall. Starting point, ending point, take the distance. It still lands on the golden ratio, so it is still the 60 40 rule, with 40 percent on one side and 60 on the other. To be exact it is 62 and 38, but 60 40 is important in everything.

Go even deeper and take the middle line. Even how you place it matters. I cannot slide that line just anywhere, because it would not support my space idea. The biggest space is on top, so the space has to be bigger on the upper side, inside the leaves too. Never in a center. So the center is not the center. It is still a golden center.

Which way the division leans tells you something too. It can go toward the center if you are French, and out the other way if you are Italian. The French like to fight the idea. They still stay in a golden ratio, but they put the division closer to the center. That way is still beautiful and just communicates a different idea. On this leaf I follow the Italian logic.

The subdivisions follow the same logic, and here the class has to tell me where the line should go. The upper part is the hero, the bigger part. The guy on its side supports the idea while standing against it. If that guy looks left, this guy is supposed to look right. Your 60 40 division sits right there.

None of it needs calculating, and my advice is to just buy calipers. Take it to the extreme and the piece gets more beautiful the further you go, though it takes longer.

Why must a repeat never run parallel?

There is also the Law of Repetition, where we repeat the movement on a different scale. My main arc goes on the Baroque diagonal, and I repeat it in other parts of the design. Then I catch myself. Logically I have done it wrong, because the repeat still has to be tapered from the same point where everything grows. So it repeats, but not parallel. A little bit off.

Rhythm is repetition of the detail, but not at the same size. That arc is a long one, this one is shorter, and that one shorter again. Take calipers to them and the distances still come out near 40 and 60. I am not saying you have to calculate all the time. Somehow you just get to that, naturally.

Music does the same. A musician repeats the same part and plays with the volume, pressing harder to make it stronger and barely hitting to bring it down. We can repeat the same idea in art too, but we change the size, not the volume.

Why do my flowers never repeat a size?

Three flowers should never be the same size. One is the main one, and the others are bigger or smaller than it. Sometimes I put really tiny flowers in just to make the big one stand out, and we call them filler flowers because they fill the space.

Even small ones never repeat. Say a flower is 20 millimeters, three quarters of an inch, and the next one is smaller, and another smaller still. Eight flowers in one spot become a single element for me, and I repeat that group somewhere else with five, at a slightly different size. That creates the depth.

Even the center of a simple flower obeys it. On my Venetian style panel, the center of the flower is never in the center. I carve a small notch inside it to make one small spot of shadow. Shadow is another idea, with five levels of its own.

Where else do I use the arabesque rule?

On the Venice Room panel, workshop 94, I draw a line that makes almost an S curvature instead of a single arc. Even inside that S, I have to decide where the movement turns. I could take the movement a little nicer, and then it goes in a direction that is actually called the arabesque in the design world. One side has a small section and the other does not, so I probably have to add one, and it is going to be smaller. By smaller I mean dynamic symmetry. With true golden ratio calipers that is 62 out of 100 against 38 out of 100, or the 60 40 rule if you want it simple.

In the floral and molding panel course, lesson 7, I make a separation on a flower and it comes out looking like a straight line. It doesn't look good. So I tell everyone to avoid straight lines in flowers and make some kind of wave, some arc, the arabesque. A minute later a movement is still a little too straight, so I take a quarter-inch #5 and curl it backward, the opposite direction.

On the grape onlay, lesson 9, I stop before I start the overall movement to remind everyone of the arabesque law. One part of it is the movement, which has to flow together, with everything connected to everything. I say something honest there too. You don't really have to follow those rules if you feel like that's too much.

When the class shapes the Byzantine acanthus, leaf 6, I ask for a really nice transition downhill on the side, a beautiful arc with no straight line, and I tell them to remember the arabesque idea. That leaf comes from the Byzantine style, and the arabesque idea goes with it.

What makes classical work last?

What we call harmony is what feels good and looks good, and it just talks to my brain. You can't call a couple of strokes and express yourself, baby, harmony. How long is that going to last? I say not long. But look at pieces from the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, because they are still beautiful. Objects 2,000 years old still look beautiful, and people still repeat them everywhere.

Why does 18th century furniture look much better, even when it is plain? It still has some curvature. Even without carving, it leans toward the classical.

Expressing yourself according to the law means you are expressing the law of creation. Outside of the law, it is ego.

At the very end of the lesson I tie all this to the law of space from the lesson before. You have to understand what surrounds the main idea. And when you work with the space, nothing is straight, and everything just has a curve.

Drawn in chalk	What I tell the class about it
One letter S	Under a growing leaf, it shows growth
A letter T	No T stops, even in empty space
Three or five	Usual acanthus divisions from the Fibonacci numbers
The center line	At 60 40, bigger space on top
A repeated curve	Smaller each time, tapered from one point

This lesson leans on the three before it. Lesson one sets out the golden ratio, lesson two covers the two diagonals, and lesson three covers space, all inside principles of design in wood carving. To put these rules on a real leaf in wood, try the Roman acanthus course. Tuition runs monthly or yearly and renews automatically until you stop it.

Shall we carve?