Drawing and Painting the Landscape - The Divine Proportion

Divine Mousehole Harbour

Lesson 30 of  Drawing and Painting the Landscape by Philip Tyler is about the Divine Proportion – probably the most aesthetically beautiful division of a line in the world. 

The Divine Proportion has many pseudonyms: the golden ratio, the golden section, the golden mean, the golden proportion, the golden cut, the golden number, the divine section, phi, etc, etc. 

If you want to learn more, Wikipedia has an article  (see Golden ratio).

Philip defines the divine proportion:

It is the division of a line into two parts, where the small part relates to the bigger as the bigger part relates to the whole.

This is what it looks like - and some equations for good measure

The Divine Proportion

Philip explains how to draw a golden rectangle (a rectangle with side lengths in the golden ratio) by starting off with a square and adding on a rectangle - using a ruler, setsquare and compass.

Drawing a Golden Rectangle

The interesting thing is, the rectangle we add on is also a golden rectangle because golden rectangles exhibit a form of self-similarity.

If we start off with a golden rectangle, and add a square to its long side, we end up with another golden rectangle

Another Golden Rectangle

Add another square to its long side, we end up with another golden rectangle

And Another

And so, on

Golden Spiral (Approximate)

Look familiar? (see Drawing and Painting the Landscape - What is the proportion of the rectangle?)

Philip suggests analysing some of your favourite landscapes to see if key parts of the composition conform to the divine proportion.

I studied quite a few pictures - new and old. I didn’t find a lot of correlations. One of the panels was almost a golden rectangle. 

The Beach at Trouville (with a Golden Rectangle)
Eugène Boudin
From Wikimedia Commons

The placement of the sun in Monet's "Impression, Sunrise" divides both the horizontal and vertical almost perfectly by their divine proportion.

Impression, Sunrise (with a Phi Grid)
Claude Monet
From Wikimedia Commons

That was about it. This analysis of historic paintings didn’t convince me that the great artists made/make use of the divine proportion, but as an exercise I applied it to a photo I am using as the source for a painting. 

Mousehole Harbour

I thought the composition of the photo was pretty good – lose some of the boats close to the left-hand side – job done. I investigated a lot of different crops using a phi grid to apply the divine proportion. Zooming in, aligning the strong horizontal under the buildings with the upper divine proportion and the major boats with the left-hand divine proportion gives (for me) a more pleasing composition (see the photo at the top of the post). I will emphasise these alignments some more in my preparatory sketches.