Episode 61 - Elements of Art & Principles of Design

Have you ever felt overwhelmed or confused about how to design something? I don't mean just any something, but I mean something really beautiful. It often seems so difficult to understand what makes something beautiful, good design or good art, when the possibilities are, without any exaggeration, infinite. How do we know what colors work with what shapes, with what patterns? Art, to me, often seems like the wild, wild west, expansive, untamed, and undefined. So where does one even start? Now, what if I told you that there are well-established conceptual guidelines that can help us understand what makes good art and design similar to how there are grammatical frameworks underlying good writing? today on this episode of woodworking is bullshit we're going back to school baby with the elements of art and principles of design i'm telling y'all right now it's gonna be a spicy one We ride, bitches. We're already half the sauce in the bag, and we are raring to go. This is your favorite podcast, Woodworking is Bullshit. I'm your host, Paul Jasper, Copper Pig Woodworking, scientist by day, woodworker by night, and I'm here with two of my favorites. I do what I want. Eric Curtis, fine furniture maker and content creator. Don't they style a biblioteca, motherfuckers? And in the other chair tonight, we have art professor, learning designer, homesteader, and the sexiest voice in podcasting, Jack Thomas. Classes in session, boys. Jack, it's already 90 degrees outside. I was not emotionally prepared for that. I'm turning it up tonight. And getting turned up tonight. I, if you have the video feed, you can see I am prepared tonight. Paul's a slut for theory. I'm a slut for theory. I have my custom-made slut for theory t-shirt from Jack that she gave me last time she visited. Kids, we are going back to school today. We talked about the elements of art and principles of design, I don't know, maybe a year and a half ago. We touched on them in another episode with the three of us. And we asked you, is this something you'd like us to take on as a dedicated topic? And the responses we got were overwhelming. So many people wrote to us saying, yes, I would love a discussion about the elements of art and principles of design. So because we're the coolest podcast ever who has a resident art professor as one of our – We have our own retainer. I know. She's one of our consistent chair co-hosts. They pay me in liquor. It's worth every drop. It's true. I mean, what other podcast has an art professor fucking doing it up? So we have Jack ready to edumacate all of us on this very somewhat elusive, but maybe not so much after we hear what she has to say topic. Yeah, it's actually it's actually ridiculously straightforward. And I just I want to preface this by saying I apologize in advance that by the time we get through talking about the elements of art, I will already be drunk. So if you ever wanted to. to drink with your art professor and you never got a chance. Now is that time. Now's the time. You're doing it. You're doing it. So I want to make this as not didactic as possible. And when it comes to being an art professor, a good art professor is never the sage on the stage. They're not just talking at you. Right. So like the podcast format is a little bit different for that. So I'm going to do my best. Let's keep it wild. But I want everybody to hear me super clearly on this one thing. If you walk away remembering nothing else tonight, either because you have ADHD or you're getting drunk with us or whatever the reason is. Yes. And just remember this one thing. The elements of art are like the ingredients in a recipe and the principles of design are like the instructions for how you use the ingredients in that recipe. I'm going to say it one more time. The elements of art, the elements of art are the ingredients in a recipe and the principles of design are how you use the ingredients in a recipe. OK, that's a really great. Can I for the woodworkers among us, how I articulate to my students? And that's a really, really good way to say it. But something that I think hits maybe a little more home for the folks who never get out of the woodshop. what I tell my students, and tell me if you disagree with this, Jack, please, is the elements of design are the raw materials, the wood, and the principles of design are the tools with which you manipulate that material. That is true. Yep. Right. So they are the table saw, the jointer, the, you know, et cetera, et cetera. Yep. Absolutely. I would agree with that. Yeah. At least that first pass, I think I would agree with that. I'm sure. I'm going to take it. I'm never going to let you think about it again. You're right. You're right. You earned it. You earned it buddy take it take it i like jack's metaphor better all right you just got baked goods on the brain so so what are the elements of art i'm just super quickly i'm just gonna i'm gonna say them out loud before we dive into talking about them and full disclosure if you see me looking over here yes i am literally reading them off of a screen because i can already feel this mezcal in my bloodstream and i don't want to mess this up for anybody let's go all right so So line, texture, value, form, shape, color, and space. Line, texture, value, form, shape, color, and space. Okay. Yeah. Can we define each one of those briefly? We're going to do it. Where's Mary at when you need her? Okay, what's the definition of a line? Really? How can people define a line? Can I, wait just for a moment, can I tell you how excited I am for this episode? I feel like I'm back in like a lecture hall and I couldn't be more excited to hear this. Go ahead, Jack. That's the academic in us is definitely feeling that. All right. So just 10,000 foot overview layman's terms. We're not going to get, you know, this is, I used to teach this class as a whole semester, like literally a whole semester. So this is like the 50,000 foot view. But basically, a line is two points in space being connected. It can be a straight line. It can be a wiggly line. It can be a curved line. A spiral is a line. Right. As soon as that line comes full circle, literally or figuratively, and those two dots reconnect in space, it becomes a shape. Right. So if we think about a straight line that becomes an arc and then it goes just a little bit further, it becomes a circle. And that is a shape. When you take a shape and you make it three dimensional, it becomes a form. So you can already see how these three things are laddering up to each other, right? The line becomes the shape becomes the form. A form and also a shape contain space and space is around them. So let's go back. Let's rewind and ladder it up again. You're looking at a blank sheet of paper, I think in two dimensions. I'm sorry. We're looking at a blank sheet of paper. There's a dot. The dot connects to another dot and that's a line. The line continues around up to the left, down again. We see a rectangle. The rectangle is the shape. Then we push out that shape and it becomes a three-dimensional rectangular prism. It's now a form. And inside of it and all around it is space. So line, shape, form, and space. Wow. Do we feel together? Oh, yeah. That's a very succinct way to do it that I have never articulated it in that way before. And it's very clear why you were a collegiate professor. And I just get paid to teach people how to fucking cut dovetails. I did say I liked her metaphor better anyway. It's just because she sounds better saying it. No, it's not just because she explains it better. Sorry to call you out. I love you to pieces, but no fucking way. It's okay. I'll play second fiddle to Jack all day. I mean, not like the way the way that you teach people. And again, I haven't been in the classroom full time in like a long time. So between that and the mezcal, I'm feeling a little bit rusty. I appreciate you guys rolling with me on this, you know. All right. So that's that's where our laddering up is going to end to an extent. Let's talk. Let's talk about value now. And I don't mean like monetary value. I'm talking dark and light. Right. OK. So on this page where you have your you have your three dimensional, you know, little line work kind of 3D stick figure rectangular prism. Right. Let's pretend that you take your pencil and you shade kind of lightly with it. And you create this like sort of light gray and then you start to bear down harder and harder and harder. And that shading gets darker and darker. Right. You create this this smooth gradient, a spectrum from light to dark. That's value. Light and dark are value. So it could be anything from white all the way to black. Color overlays with value. Sometimes you have pure color, let's say red. And then if you add white to it, it becomes a tent of itself. So red plus white creates pink, which is a lighter value of red. So there's kind of a Venn diagram for how color and value intersect. You add black to red and it's going to become dark red. You know, maybe burgundy, depending on the specific hue of red. Ron Burgundy? Ron Burgundy. Rich Corinthian leather. Exactly. All right. So that's almost all of them. The last element of art is texture. this can get super wild so there are different kinds of texture there's perceived texture which is like when you look at something you you know it might be like let's say someone has drawn on this paper that we have in front of us someone has drawn something that looks like animal fur it's not really animal fur it doesn't really feel like that right it's an imaginary texture a perceived texture an optical texture and then there's real texture like when you pet your dog that actually feels real. It has a real texture. So that is my super 50,000 foot view, drunken, slightly drunken assessment of the elements of art and how they all fit together. Jack, that's so good. That's a fantastic thing. Can we pause before we move on to the principles? Absolutely. I think we need to. It's a lot. Can can we you have a tendency toward two dimensions? And I know we got a lot of creative folks who work in two dimensions, but we also have a lot of creative folks who work in three dimensions. So can we talk about how we take those same elements and kind of do a two minute interview or overview of what they look like in three dimensions instead of two? Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. All right. So let's rewind back to line for a second. One important thing that you have to remember about line, whether you're working in two dimensions or three dimensions, is that line has emotional quality. And this is where it starts to get like kind of bonkers conceptual. Really? Oh, we've talked about this in past episodes. Why circles and soft shapes feel comfortable and jagged edges feel aggressive. Oh, that's what you mean. Absolutely. Okay. So let's think about the silhouette. Right now. Now, yes, if something is a piece of furniture, it is in three dimensions inherently. But let's think about the silhouette of that thing. If you have a silhouette whose primary outline, keyword line, is a curve, let's say, that thing is going to have a more organic, perhaps even feminine coded vibe to it than something that has a very straight, vertical line that defines it, right? Something let's I'm imagining like a cabinet, let's say, let's say like a tall, a tall cabinet, maybe like a pantry cabinet. And if it has a strict vertical line along which two doors open that exactly, exactly. The verticality of that is going to emphasize its height, its strength and its stableness in in the space it occupies. If you have a cabinet that has like, I don't know, two doors that meet in kind of a curve or something like that, which I feel like, I don't know, I haven't seen you guys make anything like that that I can remember. But if two doors meet in a curve. I've got one just off camera, but it's hard to get that on view. Yeah. If two doors meet in a curve, it's not going to emphasize the same. It's not going to emphasize the same things. It's not going to have that same like vertical, strong, stable architecture. It's not necessarily going to feel wishy-washy, but there is going to be a certain organic nature to it because of that curve. I have a question. Yeah. So we've always heard that if you wear a shirt with horizontal stripes, it makes you look fat. And if you wear a shirt with vertical stripes, it makes you look thinner. Well, this is exactly what that is. This is exactly that. Is that the same idea? Yeah, it is. If you want a cabinet to look tall and like you run, you use rift saw material, you run all of those lines vertical, it stretches it out vertically. if you want it to feel like squat, if you want it to feel like it's taking up a lot of volume, you run the lines horizontally. It's absolutely true. For those of us who run a little heavier, we know those of us in the know, you don't wear horizontal stripes. Pinstripe suits all day? All day. Please continue. Literally, literally, if you were to take, if you were to build two identical cabinets and one of them had like, you know, a vertical, a vertical line pattern on the doors and the other had a horizontal line pattern and they were in two separate rooms, somebody who saw them not side by side would literally say, no, dude, that cabinet with the vertical, you know, it's taller. It's taller. Well, let's apply that even more specifically to woodworking. Right. So if you took a bunch of rifts on, if you made the same cabinet twice and you had a peridors on there. You have rifts on material all across one door, and then you just have flats on material across the other. So you have those cathedrals, those cathedrals, because even though they're running north, south, they spread out horizontally. That cabinet is going to feel wider than the other one. Absolutely. Every single time. Yep. I never thought of this ever. This never even crossed my radar. But while you were saying that, I was imagining the straight grain of like quarter sawn or rips on super straight vertical lines right and i thought what does burl do does that make it feel disorganized well let's let's pause that for texture because that's a great question okay yeah all right keep going keep going yeah absolutely absolutely okay so uh that's we covered that was just line so all right form so when we push that oh no shape let's let's ladder up correctly all right so shape we kind of we've kind of touched on this a little bit, but if something has a generally rounded shape, it's going to give a different quality, also a different emotional quality, much like the emotional quality of line. If something is rounded, it's going to be feminine coded. It's going to feel inherently more organic. It's going to have a more like calming effect in general. And again, thinking about it in terms of two dimensions, if you have a painting that has a lot of like swirls and curves in it, inherently, that's going to give you a very different feeling when you look at it than something that has a lot of geometric straight lines, whether they're vertical or horizontal. Jack, is that like Van Gogh's Starry Night, all swirling, everything's curvy versus like cubism where you're like, oh. Yeah. So cubism creates a sense of space really effectively because of the layering, but it doesn't create a sense of movement necessarily in the same way that Van Gogh's Starry Night does. When you see a spiral, our lizard brains kick in and read movement. It doesn't, you know. I love that. He doesn't love Starry Night, dude. You find me anyone, I mean, other than an art critic, but find me any layperson who doesn't like that painting. Anybody who says they don't like it is just trying to be like anti-mainstream. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I liked his work before he got famous better. Joke's on you, because he didn't get famous until he died. Please continue. Okay, so form. We've gone line. We've done shape. Now we're talking about form. All right, so let's think about forms. I'm really curious to hear y'all's take on this because this is where it really transcends into three dimensions, and so it starts to get out of my wheelhouse to an extent. So form, if we think about form, like a triangle is flat. A pyramid is a form. a square is a shape it's flat a cube is a form some forms appear more solid than others in space and not just because they might have a hole through them or they might be a sphere like if something's spherical you it's almost like the spiral there's an implication that's going to roll off right something that has a form that is more horizontally oriented and that takes up more space that touches the ground is going to be deemed to be more stable and a more humble form. So if you want something with a humble vibe to it and a solid, stable vibe, you're going to build low to the ground. You're going to follow a horizon line. If you want a form that feels grand, you're going to go vertical with that form. That's an interesting way to articulate that. I've never considered that juxtapositional of humble and grandiose before. but like I I do this this is um a conversation that happens a lot in table design especially with younger students uh who who want to like push boundaries and that's great right like take risks try things you don't know the answer until you ask the question and seek the answer but what invariably happens is somebody goes okay well I want to make a table but I'm going to make the legs canted in and then you go well why does that feel there's two things that it feels simultaneously number one it feels just like it feels weird it feels like it's going to topple over right and it's exactly what you just said it's if it is skinnier at the base than it is at the top it feels unstable that's just how forms work um but the other thing it in in the furniture world it can feel animalistic like it can feel like it's like it's attempting to move and we'll get into movement later but it it can have a bit of a stance of like aggression which is an interesting so so let's let's just take a four-legged table right yeah and if you can't those legs in just a little bit almost like a spider walking towards you or something that's always the comp a spider or like a like a because teddy just walked in the room like a pit bull ready to attack right And those legs are just slightly canted in and they're ready to move. So it has this very aggressive feel and no longer feels like that's a table I want to sit at and engage with. I'm picturing some of the furniture in Beetlejuice right now. That's such a good visual concept. That's good. Because those are obviously people who knew how they were manipulating your emotions in the visuals. And it's very subtle shit like that. One thousand. Absolutely. While we're talking about this table, and this will be just a little preview for later for principles of design, but if you were to take that same table with the legs kind of canted in, but then the legs all converged on a very dense, solid base, say like a solid slab of marble or a really thick slab of walnut or something, that changes the conversation. But now we're getting in a lot of weight and color weight and everything else. I know. That's why I said taste for later. Stay tuned. Come back after the commercial break. Exactly, exactly. All right, so we've got lime. We've got shape. We've got form. Talking in terms of three-dimensional stuff. All right, value. So value, whether something is light or dark, this is a conversation where I start to think about finishes, right, in terms of woodworking. now whether this is for 3d or for 2d this is going to be true either way things that are lighter in value closer to white appear to come forward to your eye and appear to move up to the eye what come forward is interesting forward and up right get out baby yeah things that are darker recede or appear lower to the eye so paul think about how a shadow like falls right first of all the shadow always falls under a table under a chair right so so dark always feels heavier it always goes more to the ground but also in anything in the history of two dimensions right painting photography whatever it is you're never going to have like or i should i shouldn't say never very rarely 99 repeating of the time your figure is going to be front lit so your shadows are falling to the back of the canvas the back of the photograph etc okay and even let's imagine like a black and white photograph for a second that's maybe taken close to dusk like the photo is very dark let's say there is a figure in the foreground but the figure is is in shadow as well But let's say that kind of like right back here, like you can see if you're watching, if you're on Patreon and you're watching the stream, I have this lamp that's back here in the back. Yeah. Tell me that if the foreground weren't a little bit darker, I'll hit my light for a second. Your eye is drawn to that light. It is. Your eye is inherently drawn to a highlight and it wants to move forward in your field of vision because you're so fixated on it. What? Yeah. So in the woodworking world, this is one of the coming back to like early mistakes that designers make. They'll they'll play around with wood combinations. Right. Everybody always wants to do like walnut and so walnut and maple, walnut and oak, whatever it is. So they'll do the walnut base and they'll do the oak top. But then at some point they go, well, but walnuts more expensive and it's prettier. So I'm going to put the walnut on top and the maple on the bottom or the oak on the bottom and the ash on the bottom. and that table always looks just a little off. Like it's not that it's not well done, but it just looks funny because the weight of the color on top is not correct. I can see that. Yeah, the light on the base doesn't seem to work at a visceral level to me. Let me ask a question to both of you. I often, and this is precisely about the point you just made, I often have to ask people, customers, what kind of wood do you want? Do you want light-colored contemporary maple or do you want dark-colored warm mahogany leather-bound books walnut? Nine times out of ten it walnut Is that just a fad of our culture right now Or does that have something to do with this element of tone you talking about I would say it's cultural. Now, I can't speak from the maker's perspective, but thinking from the perspective of somebody who would ask for that. I mean, I'm going to ask for the walnut all day. but also I live in Vermont where maple is very prevalent. I'm not saying it's trash wood by any means, you know, but I think that we have been coded at least in Western culture recently to see things that are closer to white as modern and to see things that are darker and moody and saturated and a little bit warm to the, you know, and I'm like, give me that sweet, sweet walnut baby. Like, cause, Oh, my God. Jack, look at the room I'm in. That's a whole other fucking episode, buddy. Look at the room I'm in, right? I know. And I love it. And I love it. And, like, I'm just so over. I'm so over the modern sterility, the light spaces. Like, I want coziness. I want warmth. And this is where, like, when you're talking about interiors, not just furniture but 3D interiors, saturated color and warmth, they have emotional qualities. Color has emotional qualities. So you keep hitting warmth, right? And I think that is the key point. Like I was trying to think of how I would answer that question. And it's about the warmth of the tones of the wood. And there's something about like it feels inviting. It feels, you said cozy several times as well, like sitting our fucking cave people brain, like sitting around a fire, just like being humans together. There's darkness there, right? and there's something about that coziness that feels like the sterility of maple doesn't hit that in the same way yeah and i don't know why that is and i don't even know if that's a real answer but like it doesn't there's something there yeah there's something there but that could be very cultural i guess it sure doesn't feel it feels visceral but it feels lizard brain to me it does but all right anyway that's a good question though and there's there's also something just Just like just while we're because we're kind of we're kind of making the natural segue into talking about color here. Right. Like, you know, Greg and I are redoing speaking of fire, like we're redoing our kind of like library fireplace den room. And we're like, man, what are we going to do for the floor in here? And it's like, well, God, there's so much maple in Vermont. We could do like a maple floor, but we really kind of want to go with like a warm, dark olive green, like almost what you have on your walls, Eric, for that space. and it's like but with that light color on the floor and the dark on the walls like what no i don't think so it's not gonna work yeah yeah yeah doesn't hit the same it doesn't hit the same so there there are ways to you to turn this on its head though right so like you're talking about god there's just so much potential and value right because and that starts to get into emphasis one of the principles wow save it baby i'm saving it i'm saving myself for emphasis let's let's not joke i've never saved myself for anything there's the instagram clip i do what i want what i want um so like the vow the value and color conversation you can turn value on its head so like you're talking about walnut on top and ash on bottom just looks weird, right? Because it's like the darker color on top. Okay, okay. But what if the walnut top of the table is very thin and the ash base is very chunky? Oh, well, we're getting back in the line weight, right? Exactly, exactly. And just into, well, that's another thing for a proportion. I'm just saying. So, but you can see, you can see how these start to dovetail, right? Like, you know. 1000%. Yeah. For lack of a lesser pointed pun. Yes. Uh, I do just want to say, I agree with you 1000%. Like there are endless combinations of ways that like you can manipulate the elements to do a thing that is abnormal, but successful. The thing is, um, it takes such a deft hand to do it well. and that's that's the thing i just want to be careful about of like you can be like there's no right answer do whatever the fuck you want but then you you look at it and you go like it's it's wrong somehow oh no there's no right answer but there are wrong answers exact that's exactly true and i think that we will probably get into that in the after show uh as we as we kind of talk about creativity and you know like uh yeah okay so i i we have flirted we mostly talked about value yeah flirted with color a little bit yeah i just want to say that like obviously they're very very related and in the woodworking world specifically there are light woods and dark woods and in between woods and then there are the woods that have actual color that you have to contend with sometimes so like cherry is very warm very comforting but but like it's not on the maple oak walnut scale right like it sets aside from that and then of course you have like the blood wood's the padauks the purple hearts the yellow hearts etc all of those things where you're just like i don't even know what the fuck to do it like how am i supposed to do something with purple i mean that's an excellent question i don't envy you guys on on that one well let me let me ask you this jack so it is no secret to people who have seen my work over the last several years and heard me talk endlessly about design that i am still to this day terrified of color it is color theory is not my strong suit. So I use value and I cheat and I limit my palette to wood tones. This is part of the reason I don't color wood is because I'm just like, it is what it is. And that way you can't blame me for the color being wrong. Cause it's just the fucking tree. Okay. I am a big wuss. It's fine. So what I will typically do, this is the only cheat that I have. And I want you to pick this apart and I want you to tell me why I'm wrong. But the only cheat that I have is most woods are warm toned. Even if you get like the maples, if you put an oil finish on it, it will amber up. Right. And so if I have to incorporate color, I can counterbalance that with a cool tone, which is why basically the only time I ever employ color in my work, it's either blue or green. That's all I got. That's my only fucking trick. dog take take me to school dog no look look look i'm not i'm not ripping that apart because it's a personal preference and here here's why the the only rule at least the only rule we have time to cover in the podcast tonight about color if you remember nothing else about color remember remember that uh colors that are across from each other on the color wheel like blue and orange, like green and red, are complementary colors. And when you smash them together, they create an energetic relationship, an energetic relationship. So think about it in two-dimensional, in a two-dimensional sense. If you see the color blue and the color orange together, paint swatches, right? Imagine paint swatches. Fuck the Mets, but carry on. Yeah, I mean, agree. Fuck the Mets. No offense. But yeah. So if you see those two colors together, That's a high energy color relationship. But if you see, let's say, a dark navy and a medium blue and a light blue, that is a calming color relationship because it's a monochromatic relationship. right it's tense and shades of one thing it's simple it's more calm even if you were to do a dark orange a medium orange and a light orange it's still not going to be as energetic as a blue orange combo because those two colors are in opposition to each other is that similar to how like in music you you have resonance and dissonance and like resonance always feels like it's arrived like it's there it's calming and dissonance always yeah it's uncomfortable but it's energetic. Bingo, dude. That's exactly it. That's exactly it. Yeah. Jack, there's something I read about orange and blue being very commonly used in movie posters for action movies and dramas. And I, once I heard that I started looking and sure enough, I see it all the time. Like the blue sky transitions to the orange explosion or something like that. Yeah. I see it everywhere now blue and orange is like the most it's the most common energetic color combo because red and green feels like christmas you know and then like yeah and then green and purple feel kind of like you know i mean like the joker compliment yeah yeah or like mardi gras or something you know so like blue and orange are like a very common you know a very common high energy vibrancy it's so funny that like in our like anytime blue and orange maybe this is my new york bias but like it's the Mets and the Knicks, you know, and like green and purple is the Joker and red and green is obviously Christmas. Like all of the pairs are already spoken for because 20th century marketing. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And like warm colors. So like just the same way that line has emotional quality, color also has emotional quality. And we see it all the time. Like generally cool colors are thought to be more calming, more serene. Warm colors are thought to be generally more energetic. So even inside of a monochromatic, a single color palette where it's just dark and light, you know, of that one color, any monochromatic color palette is still going to be lower energy than a complementary color palette. It's so interesting that in color theory, that is opposite of what we just articulated about wood tones in value. What do you mean, Eric? Well, you said that cooler tones are seen as calming and warmer tones is seen as like energetic and maybe aggressive whereas we just said 10 minutes ago we said the exact opposite about what yeah because warmer tones are calming and inviting and we want them there and it's like lighter tones paler tones are distant it's like light in your house when there's like cold light bulbs like super clinical it's like oh get it away it's not calming at all in fact it's the incandescent spectrum that makes me feel calm but jack as you were saying it i pictured monet's water lilies and all the cool blues and light greens and it is very serene so it's almost like i i don't know which is correct like they're both right they're both correct this is what's interesting to me about this this thing is because like what we're articulating is anything can feel good until it's taken to its extreme Right. Like the warmth of a wood tone reminds us of like the fire and sitting around the cook fire and like feeling the warmth. But then once it's a little too red, it's the blaze of a dangerous fire. Yeah. Whereas like the cool tones of a springtime sky and some fresh grass and flowers, that's really comforting. but the cool tones of like a cold winter day that's like really flirting with danger or the light in a dentist's office right yeah like yeah yeah yeah okay it's this weird if i can use a color verb or a vocabulary word here it's the intensity of it that really yes absolutely absolutely and i also think about it like you know how in summertime we want the air conditioning on and in wintertime we want the heat on. I think it's like that. That seems... It's the balance of things. It's all about the balance. We've all been in our grandma's living room or something where it's 1970s crocheted orange and brown and olive green and you're like, I would kill just to see some white right now or something like that. It's like that, right? Too much of a good thing. Don't push it. Yeah. Okay, so we've talked about line, value, form, shape, color. As far as the elements go, we have two left that we really need to talk about, space and texture. With three dimensions. With three dimensions, exactly. Space is something that you guys understand inherently so much better than I do. The way that I think about space, it comes in when I'm thinking about how to curate an art show specifically. Like there is nothing more overwhelming or annoying to me than going to an art show where the walls are like friggin packed. The floor is packed with like three dimensional pieces. You're suffocating in that space. Right. Like the way that we interact with space has a profound emotional impact on us. And our bodies exist in relation to furniture and to space. Like you can never ignore how the human body occupies space in terms of furniture or three-dimensional art, period. So let's say I'm in a room with a piece that is low slung. I'm imagining like a low sort of like entertainment console, like a blocky mid-century thing maybe where I can't even see the legs of it. I do not feel assaulted by this piece, right? Like this piece makes me feel like I am in command of the space. Like I can move freely about the space. If I walk into a space and there's like a massive overwhelming, I'm thinking about these like shitty, like 1990s, early 2000s entertainment centers that are like, you know, eight feet tall and they've got like massive blocky cabinets on the top and stuff. I inherently feel smaller in this space and lesser in this space for standing in the space with this thing, right? So it's about how our bodies interact with the, with the form, the three-dimensional form of a thing and how the three-dimensional form of a thing interacts with the room that it's in as well. So yeah, you're articulating the thought of how the object is going to exist in its final rest or intended resting place, right? So whether it's a gallery space or a client's home or the builder's home, whatever it is. The thing that I see more young furniture designers struggle with is just the grasping of positive and negative space. So relevant. Can you define positive and negative space? Sure. So the way that I tell students about this is very simply like the positive space is the thing that exists and the negative space is the thing that looks like it should exist, right? So a mortise is negative space, right? It is the hole in the piece. The positive space would be the tenant, the thing that fits within it. And what often happens with young furniture designers is you just try to make everything out of wood and you try to make it feel sturdy. and what it ends up doing is it just takes up too much positive space it just exists to and we're getting into proportions a little bit obviously too but like it it's just too fat it just takes up too much so jack this is getting to your point of like it it's just too big for the damn space it's too thick for the space the line weight is too much um so understanding again coming back to the music analogy like what notes not to play when to allow space to exist in the object to go away is a really crucial uh muscle to develop in your design skills the the context that i most often think about negative space is in good public speaking yeah if you're talking all the time and you never leave a pause, it's not good. Yep. It's too much. Like you're drinking from a fire hose if you're in the audience of that. Yep. Yeah. And I think about that all the time as I want to make our podcast better all the time. For us and for the listeners, I want a more engaging, more compelling, more thoughtful podcast. And I think, what can I do that can help make this podcast better? And it's eliminate the use of filler words and learn how to manage my negative space. Those are the two things that I think about most often. That's an excellent comp. That's excellent. Yeah. You know, negative space is something that I feel like I don't see much of in furniture in terms of what I think of as negative space, except for like with the exception of tables. I think tables, negative space inherently exists underneath it for so many of them. You know, like we don't see tables that are just like literally, you know, cubes or rectangular prisms too often. Right. Negative space can be an amazing way to counterbalance a piece that necessarily has to be tall and wide and deep. like if there is a if there's a client that's like yeah dog i need this thing to be like floor to ceiling you know nine or ten feet tall or something i you know let's say it's a bookshelf right like a you know or some kind of a cupboard i need it to be nine feet tall i need it to be seven feet wide i need it to be 24 inches deep okay that's going to be super overwhelming for the small space that this person wants to put it in maybe so building in negative space like a cutout in the middle of it that is a like glass-faced cabinet that has something very airy that goes inside of it maybe like a flower in a vase or something like that can really change the whole conversation yeah one thousand percent one thousand percent and then texture texture's the last element of art that that we really need to dive deep on and this is where you guys are are just going to be like outstanding on it i think you know like this my favorite one. I love it. I love that because for me, I only think about texture in terms of when I'm carving a wood block to then go and print it. To me, texture outside of an imaginary space, you know, imaginary texture is not like something I think about too much. Like, how does texture come in when it comes to furniture making? Texture is outside of proportion. I think texture might be the most important element or principle because you can play with it so so much number one so texture can be real or implied right so meaning that a thing can have the texture it looks like it has so when i do a lot of carving you know it has that kind of ripple organic feel to it and it feels like soft and flowy and you run your fingers over it and the surface is smooth but it has those ripples to it but a surface can also paul coming back to your question about burls a surface can have an implied texture so you think of the undulations in a piece of curly wood right or you think of like that aggressive feel of like why does a burl feel like that why does it why does it it makes me want to run my fingers over it but it's an optical illusion it feels like it should uh feel rough under my fingers it feels like it should be aggressive and pointy and make me be uncomfortable but it's a smooth surface that's implied texture all day long man and you can also play with that in the other way around too like if we get outside of wood you can play with materials that look like they should be soft but they're glued or or formed in such a way where they're rigid and you run your finger over it and it's kind of like uncomfortable a little bit did i just yeah you dropped for a second but you're back okay um so you can manipulate texture all over the place in furniture and even down to and this is why i say i think it's one of the most important things, even down to the details in the smallest components, whether you choose to do a round over on the edge of a piece or a chamfer on the edge of a piece, one has a sharp edge, one has a soft edge, one is going to cast light and value in one way, but it's also going to draw your fingers toward it. And the other one is going to make you run your finger over it and go like, okay, but like, it doesn't make me want to hug it. Eric, when you said texture, with in with regards to woodworking i wasn't sure what you meant at first like what are all the textures like what are all the textures you're referring to when you said texture i thought of stippling you know how we take like a little burbit and we stipple wood and it's all like you know the tiny little divots and you run your hands over that i thought of that i thought of I thought of French polishing where they turn what is a beautiful piece of wood that has natural grain and texture into a piece of glass. So thereby negating the texture, almost eliminating the texture, which I don't personally like. I mean, there's a time and a place for everything. Agreed. But I'll disagree with you on that. You're not eliminating the texture. You're changing the texture. You're changing it. Fine. But it's going from wood to some other material. Wood's pretending to be glass or something. Anyway, I thought of stippling. I thought of grain. But you said your first example of texture was your ripples when you carved them. I was thinking that was more line and movement. All right. I didn't realize that was a texture. I think it's both since you can literally touch it. It has a silhouette. It's anything under the fingers, right? Eric, what are the most common textures for woodworkers that we use? uh i mean very smooth or very simply how smooth is it right like how how does the tabletop feel under your fingers how does the pole feel under your fingers in the cabinet how do you engage with the object if you have a rounded profile like if you have that cutout that jack referred to earlier in the negative space is that profile uh 90 degrees or did you round the entire thing so it's smooth to the touch. Okay. But also something as simple as your material choice. So maple is a closed cell species, right? Walnut is a closed cell species. Red oak, ash, open cell species have a fundamentally different texture that you can feel under your fingers. Which I love. And consequently, they feel more aggressive. They feel sturdier. They feel stronger. When you talk about like when you want to build something that feels like it's going to last a lifetime, why do you choose oak? Because it it feels both emotionally and physically like it's there to fuck you up. Like it is there to hold its fucking own. You know, it ain't taking no shit from anybody. But the delicacy of the feel of a of a well-plained maple top is like it's soft as a baby's bottom. And I think also, as somebody who grew up outside of good old Gatlinburg, Tennessee, in the Smoky Mountains, I would be remiss if I didn't call out a live edge on something. Oh, yeah, that texture. Yeah. So, like, not only the visual aspect of a live edge making something feel rustic, but I think this is true. When we think about smooth, we think modern. When we think rough, we think rustic. and I think that applies visually and I think it also to an extent applies like literal in the texture that we can feel and for some people feeling something rustic like it just feels like it's supposed to it's it's just it's more solid you know it's meant to last yeah great example you know one of my favorite textures and this this may come off as as odd um but one of my favorite textures is nose prints what's that hear me out hear me out uh there is one animal that has nose prints that are as unique as fingerprints and that the gorilla baby Let me tell you about Gorilla Glue motherfuckers My God I was wondering what is he talking about Sponsor of this week's episode. What? That's called a transition, baby. Come on. Our dear, dear friends at Gorilla Glue sponsoring this episode of Woodworking is Bullshit. Oh, God. Let me tell you. But you know what also has a delightful texture? A well-sanded, filled nail hole from our friends at Gorilla Glue using their wonderful filler for my projects. Now, Larissa and I just got done. I'm literally editing the video today, making a big sign project for the Philadelphia Horticultural Society. and man i there's more nails in that thing than i've done in a project in years really what i did filled every one of those little fuckers with uh gorilla wood filler i 100 did and that's before they were sponsoring us oh wow there you go true statements so uh paul why don't you tell us about the glues baby uh well i haven't i so i have the new wood glues and i there what seems to be like a regular wood glue and the ultimate wood glue. I'm wondering if it's something like one is like a typical set time and one is like a faster, stronger bond set time. But go ahead. Yeah. Well, to my knowledge, and I could be wrong about this, but I believe the ultimate wood glue actually has a longer open time. Oh, okay. Got it. I'm also intrigued at this claim of less water in it, because, as you know, water causes cupping, and especially when you're using veneers. I've been using, speaking of elements of art and principles of design, I love wooden plaid. You make a plaid out of wood, and I am not wasting big chunks of plaid when I make them. They're going to be 16th of an inch veneers, and if I glue them to a substrate with a glue that has a lot of water, they tend to cup like a potato chip. Those are all end grain, right? No. The plaids? No? No. No. They're off. Just kidding. Carry on with your point. No, no. I've done them both. I've done them end grain and I've done them side grain, but the amount of water and glue matters to me, which is why I have the honestly used Gorilla Glue polyurethane glue historically for these because it contains no water and it causes no cupping. and it's waterproof glue and it forms an excellent stiff glue line. And I am now intrigued to see what their wood glue does. Well, you should be intrigued. And I will tell you this, if I could find the call to action on this message, then I would tell you exactly where to go and what to do. But you just keep vamping for a second. You want to go to GorillaTough.com slash woodworking is BS. 1,000% you do. Go to GorillaTough.com slash Woodworking is BS because it's tough enough for the pros and it's easy enough for everybody. And because at least Paul was prepared, even if Eric... I nailed the transition! Just because I stumbled over the finish line doesn't mean that I didn't get off the starting blocks decently. You know who else gets off the starting blocks pretty good? Eric, did you go to church this week? Goddamn right I did. I pray at the altar every fucking week. You know why? Because William Teresa Burkle is a goddamn saint. Willie T. Willie T. Biggie T, as we call him in the hood. Let me tell you something about WTV Woodworking. Biggie T. Biggie T. He's got 10% off all woodturning blanks in store. He's got 10% off all boards in store. And 50% off all slabs in store. friends go to the fucking church at 390 pike road unit 2 in huntington valley pennsylvania 19006 and the double o is for uh and you can get yourself some 50 off slabs ask for biggie t and when you do make sure you say eric sent you not paul can you please please if anybody goes please walk into the store and it will either be bill or his wife if it's bill just say hi if it's wife if it's his wife please without any context just be like hey i'm looking for biggie t and just see what she says okay eric if he keeps sponsoring our podcast after this ad read it's a travesty it's love is what it is i mean i'm convinced that at 50 off i on slabs i I might be driving from Vermont to go check that out. Goddamn right you do. That's worth a trip. Jack, my understanding is with that, you can also order a LaMelo ice cream. You can. A LaMelo flavored ice cream. You can get one. I love LaMelo ice cream. I will mention once again that he is doing a $1,000 Bits and Bits shopping spree giveaway. And the entry deadline is May 22nd. So there's still plenty of time to go do that. The winner will be drawn on May 23rd, and that will be on Instagram Live at WTB Woodworking. A small vignette about bits and bits. I have – it's super quick, and we'll go back to the principles of design. I have been cutting my stadia boxes, which are curves, curvilinear, right, soft, channeling the feminine jack, right? um i have been cutting my stadia boxes on the cnc with a quarter inch bit and i recently and it's long it has to go two inches it has to cut two inches of wood like that thing is extending way out it's only quarter of an inch thick so it it it actually twists it like bends it deflects because it's so thin i went to a half inch bit the other day oh my god what a difference yeah More girth makes a lot of difference, right? I mean, that's a fact. You could run that. It matters more than any other factor. More than you would realize. A lot more. You did not just say that. What a difference. So actually having bits of the different thicknesses actually very, very much makes a big difference on the end product, Jack. 1,000%. I'm so sorry. Can confirm. Can confirm. Okay, on to. Before we move on, I want to introduce a new segment very quick. Okay. Yep. It's a little seg I like to call Woodworking Wonders. Okay. And I have up on my screen a press release from an unnamed woodworking company. I'm going to read you this press release. I'm going to tell you all about this new product. And I want you to tell me who you think came out with this product. by the way eric did not tell us he was doing this so i sure did it but i'm not getting my pants i want to profile the latest and greatest in woodworking innovation so this new product is a polycarbonate mallet that incorporates the same thermoplastic used to protect fighter jets since the 1960s on impact polycarbonate deforms slightly without shattering making it more forgiving than a metal hammer but without the bounce of a urethane or rubber mallet the density of polycarbonate packs a lot of punch into a compact head that is what she said the tool balance comfortable comfortably in your hands making it easy to place each strike precisely where you want it and we machine the heads both in clear and black polycarbonate performance is identical and handles are turned from aircraft grade aluminum and powder coated with our signature. I can't say the last thing because that is their signature and that would give away the company. So we have a polycarbonate mallet with an aircraft grade aluminum powder coated handle. Who is making this fucking atrocity that is entirely unnecessary in the woodworking world? i hesitate to even name anybody because what the heck yeah that's it's deeply unfortunate but they'll never sponsor this uh podcast anyway so it's fine festool okay all right jack um hmm god you guys i don't please tell me it's not bridge city oh this does feel a little bit like a bridge city thing we'll just feel like the innovation is kind of making me think yeah unnecessary innovation um no unsurprisingly it's our dear friends over at woodpeckers i listen i've got nothing against woodpeckers as an idea as a concept of making high quality aluminum tools um oh the aluminum should have given it away Yeah, well, and the signature woodpecker's red. But I feel like you've really lost the plot if you're like, let's make a polycarbonate mallet with an aluminum handle and try to sell people on the fact that they need this instead of just, I don't know, turning a fucking wooden mallet. Out of a piece of firewood kicked around the floor of your shop. Out of a piece of firewood like we've been doing for centuries. I was going to say, I didn't know where you were going with this. and i i mean at least at least tell me that like the poly part is like recycled and that you can take that part off and recycle it and replace it that thing's gonna be here till the end of the earth yeah but but they're gonna buy and buy a new one in five years because it's gonna be a one-time tool that's really my biggest beef with fucking woodpeckers is the one-time tool situation all All right. Let's stick a pin in this before it gets out of hand. Okay. We've got a bee in our bonnet and we'll... Okay. No bees and no bonnets. No bees, no bonnets. Elements of art. Now, those were the cooking ingredients. And now we have to talk about the recipes. It's time to roll up our sleeves and do that recipe. All right. And because I don't want people to be here all night, right? Let's I mean, you know, not that wouldn't be a good time to hang out with us that long. But so principles of design. These are how you use those ingredients, how you use the elements of art. So just a quick overview. Here's what they are. Balance, unity, variety, emphasis, movement, pattern and proportion. Oh, my God. this feels overwhelming from the get-go. That's so much. Go ahead. It's a lot. That's what I'm saying. This was a whole semester long class. Can you say it again? Yep. Yep. All right. Principles of design. Balance. Visualize it while I'm saying it. Balance. Unity. Variety. Emphasis. Movement. Pattern. And proportion. Now, I feel like this is where you guys really sing because these things are just so like my brain's firing on all cylinders about how these are so prevalent in furniture making. Right. So from a from a 10,000 foot view. And I think we let's let's let's bang through these. This could almost be another whole episode. You know, it really could. All right. So balance. There are a couple of different kinds of balance. And when we think balance, I want us to think symmetry. Right. The word symmetry and balance, not the same thing, but the Venn diagram is almost a circle. Right. So there's there's bilateral balance where something is reflected over a single axis. There's radial balance where something is a circle. You know, if you look at it like a kid's drawing of a sunshine. Right. It's balanced along this kind of radial symmetry. So that's balance. The opposite of that imbalance can be a very strong tool if you want to make something feel precarious. Jack, is this symmetry asymmetry? Symmetry and asymmetry are tightly related to balance. Like if something is asymmetrical, it can still feel balanced if you, you know, appropriately employ emphasis. No, but I mean, yes, I totally get that. But on a cursory level, it's like balance is like something. If something is symmetrical, if something is equal on both sides, if it's symmetrical, it's balance, baby. Like, yeah, you have to try to throw that off. Right. OK. Yeah. So controlling balance can be a it's always a good thing to control it. Whether you want something to feel balanced or not, that's your own call. Right. One more question. So because the idea of balance is so relatable to everyone, the elements of art that you covered, you're talking about balancing any one of those. You're balancing lines or forms or shapes or tones or colors. Those need to be balanced. Is that right? Am I understanding that? This depends. This is where things start to get conceptual, and it's an after show thing, I think, right? Because it really relates to creativity and intent. If you want someone to feel unsettled by something, you can purposely make it imbalanced. Okay. And they will feel unsettled by that. Sorry, but what I'm asking is the balance in reference to those elements we've talked about. Yes, correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So anything that we talk about in the principles of design is always related. It's always in reference to the elements part. Okay. Always. Remember that the principles are the tools by which you manipulate the elements. Got it. Got it. Got it. So if you're manipulating, let's let's the example that I always use with balance is like symmetrical and asymmetrical balance. You can have a four legged chair or you can have a three legged chair. A four legged chair is symmetrical. A three legged chair is not. But they're both still balanced. Right. But you're manipulating balance. What I should say you're employing balance. What is the element that you are manipulating? You could argue its line. You could argue its its form if you're talking about the simple legs. So you are employing the principle in order to manipulate an element. Yeah, exactly. Please continue. All right. Unity. Does something feel overall unified? And this is like kind of a gut check thing. I hate unity and variety. It's so fucking irritating. Jack, like coherence? Yeah, coherence. Exactly. Exactly. So like, let's say you let's say you have a piece of furniture. Maybe it's I'm picturing one of those like sort of 1970s tables that has like the lamp built into it. Almost, you know, I'm talking about like maybe it's like a pedestal table that has some kind of a, you know, a gooseneck lamp or something coming off of it. Let's say that the table feels like a single unit unto itself. And then that lamp or whatever is just like completely fucking off doing its own thing. you have not even bothered with unity because you maybe you didn't make the the lamp the right tone you know maybe it's the wrong shape like when two things feel completely disconnected and disparate when something and eric you used the perfect word earlier like dissonance and music right like when there's dissonance there's a lack of unity and you can do that on purpose if you want someone to feel slightly unsettled by something that like that is that's the example i always use is is resonance and dissonance right so the reason you're you're calling it unity i i refer to it as harmony but i think they're often interchangeable they are they are um the reason they these two particular principles irritate me so much is because it's literally just vibes like does it Does it feel harmonious and resonant or does it feel dissonant and variable? Yeah. But Eric. Like your brain knows it when you see it. Sure. Yeah. Guys, guys, guys, guys, guys. Like, yes, yes. I exist in that space. I don't know any of the shit you're telling me today. I don't know the elements. I don't know the principles. I don't know jack shit. You can intuit a lot of things. My gut, my brain just knows. It just knows whether it looks good or it doesn't. But that's in some ways a position of privilege, right? Because I don't know that everyone has that aptitude. I do believe, Eric, vibes. Like that's an aptitude you have. And I'm not calling you out for it. I'm just saying you're super lucky to have that as a gut aptitude of yours. I don't disagree with that. I think the reason it irritates me is because at the very beginning of the episode, we said like you can learn creativity, right? And this is the way you do it, right? You figure out, I had to figure out that good design is a simple addition and subtraction problem. And the reason that these two particular principles irritate me so much is because every other thing has a set definition that you can change and alter and manipulate to achieve a feeling. And these two are literally just like, I don't know, it feels variable. Let's think about it like this. Let me give you another concrete example that might be easier to think about. All right. Picture a table, any table. Style doesn't matter. The wood doesn't matter. None of it matters. Just picture literally any table. That has four legs. That's the only thing I'm asking. A table with four legs. Now, let's say that three of the legs are as they should be, whatever that means for your own particular visualization. Maybe they're canted out a little bit. Maybe they are straight up and down. The fourth leg is completely fucking different. Whatever that is. That's a lack of unity, right? I mean, yeah, vibes, but also there's a lack of symmetry there. Lack of symmetry is one of the quickest ways to cause disharmony that negates that unity, right? so that's just one example of how like unity gets totally fucked through a very like measurable design decision got it yeah or if you had a beautiful texture that you had carved on the on the surface of a of a cabinet door and then something came along and put a gash in it god forbid for some reason like you're gonna you're gonna look at it if you look at it and cringe unity's gone maybe let's see who's the dude who put the nails in his furniture oh gary bennett Yeah, that's a great example. And that was so that was employing emphasis in order to create a disharmonious thing. Which is a creative decision. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it can be employed. Yeah. In furniture, the most common example of this is a lack of attention to the boards that you glue up for a table. Oh, good. right and so we've talked about this in previous episodes of like why do you color tabletops like why would you stain a thing and it's because if you have three boards from three different trees making a tabletop and they are three slightly different colors then it feels unharmonious why did i buy an entire maple tree when i made my high right because i knew i didn't want multiple trees all clashing with each other right yeah oh that's a perfect example i would have never thought of that but yeah like that would shatter the unity right away yeah it could be a perfect design but in execution because of the limitations of the material absolutely you've done fucked it up okay before we move on to the next one i just want to say eric you're you're the way you describe that as vibes i love it i get it i feel it i'm like yes king like i feel it too but there i i I do know a lot of scientists and engineers who don't feel vibes. They don't know. They look at it and they're just not sure. They don't get that feeling in their gut. In which case, I think some of the principles or that maybe the more structured approach rather than relying on vibes might be helpful. Anyway, Jack, back to you. But if you feel the vibes are off, it's equally important that if you feel the vibes are off, you be able to describe why. you know because if you can't that's just as useless as not being able to feel the vibes are off at all got it frankly yeah yeah um all right variety you hate this one too right eric fucking hate it well because it's just vibes wait wait wait yeah but like unity and variety they seem like opposing forces not necessarily so no so variety variety is just like the inclusion of different types of things. Okay. Okay. Machimalism. It's, it's math. That is true to an extent. That is true to an extent. Something you could, let's say, let's say you employed a variety of color in something. Immediately our brains are going to go, yeah, that's probably maximalist for sure. But what if you employed a variety of textures, an element of art, but the color was all the same? If you had a variety of, yeah, like if you had a variety of textures that were carved or, I don't know, applied somehow to the surface of a cabinet. Oh my God. So there's unity and variety. Correct. Yeah. This is why it irritates me. You can achieve unity and harmony through variety. It's so fucking irritating. Eric, settle down. Jack is fucking lecturing. Spicy. No, I love this. I cannot tell you how many students I have taught. I mean, just hundreds of students who were like, we're like dog man like okay fuck vibes though like like how do i how do i get the variety with the unity you know and it's like yeah this is how like you have to have a mastery of all of it you know um yeah so like variety is just the include being able to include multiple things got it sometimes for emphasis sometimes to create pattern which we'll talk about those things in a minute but not doing it in a way that's overwhelming unless you want it to be overwhelming. Maybe you want that maximalist vibe. Lean into it, girlfriend. So the desk that I'm sitting at right now, some folks listening will remember I made a desktop for a sponsored spot, I don't know, a year ago, year and a half ago, something like that. So it's a bookmatched walnut top, and it was checked to shit, right? Bunch of voids, bunch of checks. and so I've got let's see one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven bow ties or patches just in the top not including on the side and on the bottom that's a lot it's a lot right and I've got let's see I've got curly maple standard maple beach standard maple uh uh two walnut like I've got probably six or seven different tones just in the patches so this is where this was very intentional so you employ all of the the harmony and the simplicity in the book match and it feels like it exists in a very stable form and then you're just fucking peppering it with a bunch of chaos but because there's so much chaos your eye is not drawn to any one particular point of emphasis and so you're achieving unity through the variety this is the only time I've ever done that. And it still irks me a little bit, but I know that it like fundamentally from a design perspective, it's successful. And I still don't know how I feel. Eric, so you're complaining about principles that you've used very successfully. Just because I don't like them doesn't mean they're not useful tools. You know, like I don't, I don't use a scrub plane often, but when I have to, it's very useful to have it available to me. Okay so remind me again the word that you used for the you said bow ties right Okay so are all the bow ties the same size No they varying sizes They varying size And they varying The shape is roughly the same I've got three that are different shapes that are diamond shapes. The rest are, oh no, I've got a oval over here. So yeah, varying a lot of variety in the shape as well. Yeah. Yeah. And it wouldn't work if it weren't for that simplicity and harmony and symmetry. Right. You know, exactly. Yeah. Look, you did it, man. you hate it but you did it all right sure but like i hate fucking beets but i'll eat them sometime yeah because it's good for you so do it tastes like fucking dirt yeah so wait so jack what was the first uh balance balance unity unity and variety variety balance yeah okay i'm good yep yep all right so next is emphasis and emphasis is one of my faves emphasis is super important So when you want to draw the eye to a certain place in a given piece, emphasis is what you use. Emphasis can be achieved by something that takes up more space. So a piece of furniture as a whole can draw emphasis to a certain part of the room through the space that it takes up. Emphasis can be achieved through color. if you want to draw the eye to a specific part of a piece of furniture, if the whole thing is stained in a more like neutral finish and then you throw a different finish or you use maybe a darker wood or a lighter wood on a certain part of the piece of furniture, you're going to draw the eye there by creating emphasis there. If something that you're making is wholly made of sharp shapes and angles and then you put a circle on it, Oh, shape is going to draw to that point in a form and a given form like a sphere is one of the only places where you can't use form to draw emphasis because it is so smooth. But if you think about like a pyramid, every point of a pyramid, right, has emphasis because it's the point value, a change in value like a light wood versus a dark wood can draw emphasis to something. texture if something is completely smooth and then you carve out or you do a cool like textured inlay on something that's where like value and texture could create emphasis in a given place and then line if something is covered in uh generally vertical lines or horizontal lines or straight lines and then you go the opposite way with line if you have a uh what did you call riffs on if you if something is totally riffs on and then you do anything literally anything that's the opposite a line that draws the eye differently boom emphasis wow that sounds important oh it's immensely important in furniture design one of the another word that we use is contrast it's the same thing right it's just basically contrasting value light woods and dark woods contrast is a way to do it contrast is a way to create emphasis so contrast is a different Yeah. Yeah. Contrast would be like a difference in value, maybe a difference in color, but it creates emphasis anywhere there's contrast. Yeah. Yeah. Paul, in your stadia boxes, part of the reason that design works is the contrast of the, well, there's two contrasts happening. There's the tone of the wood and the tone of the brass pole. Correct. But there's also the contrast of the horizontal nature of the box itself and the verticality of the pole. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So you're juxtaposing those two things. Totally see it. Yep. Very good. Yeah, absolutely. And also, just speaking of the stadia boxes, their smallness inherently, that creates a sense of emphasis in a world where everything is large scale. Oh, Jack, they're so precious. They're so precious. I know. I just want to wrap my little hands around those little babies. I know. Oh, my God. Yeah. and then even more relevant to what we just said is proportion and proportion everything it's everything i'm skipping ahead you know i skip movement and pattern we'll come back to it but like purport it just cannot not be talked about right now it's the most important thing in furniture it's 100 you guys take it away on this one i mean this is all right look eric can i just start by saying i've seen good proportions and i've seen bad proportions and you know when it's bad. Oh, yeah. It's like the legs on a table turn into cankles or it's just viscerally, it triggers disgust if the proportions are wrong. Yeah, yeah. It feels backwards and upside down. It's terrible. Take it away. You go. For anybody that's like, okay, hold on, but what's the definition of proportion, right? Yeah, let's do it. It is the relationship between parts of a whole. So, like, it's not size. It's very important to note that size, scale and proportion are different. Size is the objective measurement of something. The table the table is 36 inches tall. Scale is in relation to the space it's in. This is small scale. Is it too big, too small for the space? Exactly. But proportion is the relation of parts to a whole. And I cannot tell you, even as somebody who does not make furniture, it is the one thing that bothers me more than almost anything else. I agree. It's the one thing that most people don't master because they're so worried about the building of the thing. And then they go from the building of the thing to how do I make curves in it? And then the curves are too exaggerated because the curves are not proportional either. And then they go like texture, tone, value, et cetera, et cetera. They never get all the way back around to proportion. I'm going to break this down for you in the most simplistic way that I can, friends. Proportion in furniture is you have a standard measurement, and that measurement is your core measurement for the entirety of the piece. You can have it. You can quarter it. You can double it. You can quadruple it. But that is your measurement. That is your one. That's your unit. And then everything in that piece is low whole number proportions. So a one to one is a square. A one to two is a perfect rectangle. Right. Then you have one to three, two to three, three to five, three to seven, five to seven, seven to nine, five to nine, sometimes eight to nine if you're getting real frisky. And after that, it kind of gets a little, you know, that's it. That's the whole thing. Okay. And if you want to get, and we haven't touched on rhythm yet, we can come back to it, but it does play into proportion in that those rhythms come out of the same proportional units that you are using to design the object. So if you have, say, a desk, and I can't remember what they're called off the top of my head, but like those old timey desks with a bank of drawers on either side, right? Those go and look at any serpentine desk. Go and look at a bomb chest. I guarantee you that there are three rhythmic proportional units in there. OK, there's two, three, two. So two units, three units, two units. There's three, five, three or there's three, seven, three. That's it. Anything that looks right to the eye, they are related in the same way. OK, they take that whatever that unit is and they break it down across the entirety of the piece. Eric, you've given a very, let's say, pragmatic approach to getting proportions correctly and demystifying them. You say there's a unit and you can use these multiples of units. What I went to when you said proportions is do humans prefer certain proportions based on evolutionary fitness, childbearing, what we view as healthy, symmetrical? All of these proportions come from the human body. Right. I mean, I think all of this seems to be informed from our lizard brain at the core. No, 1,000%. And what you just did beautifully is you gave kind of pragmatic operating rules to get something close to what our lizard brain likes. Yeah, but your head is one-eighth the size of your height, right? I don't know. Is it? Yeah, I mean, so like the vitro plane. I mean, yours might be bigger. The idealized proportions. I mean, spiritually, mine is huge. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just kidding. No, there are these, what we call the idealized proportions. And Jack, I'm sure you know far more about this than I do. But there is like the head is one eighth the overall height of the body, right? Okay. The forearm relates to the length of the arm, which relates to the span, which is that your span is the same as your overall height right like there are proportions of your body how like three two three etc a golden ratio vitruvian man yeah yeah all that bullshit it all it is all low whole number ratios got it so how we how we feel about proportion also varies based on how we want to feel about a given object or a space so like if you think about think about have you ever been to like a courthouse for instance not saying i've ever done anything bad i'm just saying you know but if we think i've never been there voluntarily right that's what i'm saying yeah exactly i do what i want i do what i want right okay you know what i don't want to tell any courthouse stories let me rewind this so let's think about tables again so if you have like a really solid farmhouse quote-unquote farmhouse table right like that the defense attorneys are sitting at in the courthouse exactly exactly paul um yes uh because they have to you know you have to bang a gavel on it or you know whatever defense attorneys do yeah not that i would ever know anyway so her name was not gavel but carry on yeah oh something something we're 90 minutes into this episode nobody's listening anymore something something length versus girth something something um so yeah that's a conversation for another time but so like if you're sitting at a table that you want to feel solid right like the proportion matters if you're sitting think about a tulip table though right like a tulip table gives you a completely you know it has a skinny little singular base and then uh and then a pedestal table a pedestal table yes sorry sorry Got it. Got it. Yeah. Thinking in architecture brain. But yes. So like it has a completely different vibe. The proportions of the base to the tabletop. It's not only about the shape, but the proportion as well. Like, Eric, I think about your Atlas table to like your Atlas table is so important in terms of proportion. you know i think and i think that we've talked about this in the past like there are some things that you could have done if you wanted to make that table top feel heavier so that the base felt like it was carrying more you know like if the if the top of that had been you know a darker value you know perhaps but also if it had just been larger somehow thicker exactly again thickness Thickness matters, man. Thickness matters. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So we skipped over. I want to finish these. So we skipped over a couple to go to proportion because it's so important. Movement and pattern. We skipped movement and pattern. And these two these two interrelate. So we can almost talk about it in the same time. It is hard to achieve movement without pattern. One way that you can do it is in terms of us. Like if we think about we talk about a spiral earlier, there are some types of line that imply movement. But pattern inherently implies movement because this is like a lizard brain thing. When we see a pattern, our eye moves across it. Oh, wow. And our brain wants to complete the sequence. And so when there's a pattern, there's almost inherently going to be movement. You almost can't avoid it. The only way that you can even begin to avoid it is a pattern that is so solid, like a plaid, for instance, where your eye wants to look at the whole thing at the same time. And so your eye actually stays still and expands and looks at the whole thing instead. That's an excellent example. I feel like you're talking dirty to me right now. I fucking love this. Let me tell you about that movement, that pattern. What's funny is as soon as you said movement and I call it rhythm, but pattern are interrelated. um i was thinking about all the pieces i've made that don't employ rhythm in order to achieve movement but you're right it's still far more common to it to achieve it using rhythm eric you're big on movement aren't you i'm huge on movement we move all the fucking time no but in your pieces i feel like you're always like yeah but the reason i'm big on movement is because we move all of the time there is nothing more boring than a thing that is stagnant that you can take the entire listen the whole adhd thing does not have to come into this i know you're moving constantly and i'm stagnating in front of the computer for six hours at a time i don't don't get personal i don't think that's it i think it's an i think it's an information thing yeah when when you look at an object and it feels stable, unmoving, you oftentimes, and this is scale comes into this, a lot of different things come into play. But if we're just talking about furniture scale objects, if it feels stable and unmoving, you intuit that you can take in all of the information that there is to take in, in a single photograph. And you are not inherently interested in moving in and exploring it further. But if there is movement, your eye naturally goes from, here's where I first saw it. Oh, what's over it? Your eye's just going, oh, squirrel. Eric, you constantly, I remember you said so many times use lines to guide the movement. Is that right? So this is what I was just referring to, all of the pieces. So Jack mentioned the spiral. Like the spiral is the easiest thing to do. If you want to draw somebody's eye from A to B, you just like put a fucking spiral in it. Or even a curve. Yeah, but we naturally follow the yellow brick road, right? And finding, yeah, a curve is another great way to like, how do you make somebody walk around the backside of a table? Just put a little curve around the side there. And then whether it's visual and their eye follows it, or they physically touch it and they walk around the side of the thing, you are inviting them to move around the object. And then are you thinking about this when you design? All the time. Wow. How do I get you like furniture? I think that we are at a fantastic event, like a genuinely exciting advantage when we're designing furniture objects, because it's one of the few things that we can approach as art or sculpture that is meant to be physically engaged with on a daily basis. like most artists whether they're painters printmakers sculptors musicians whatever it is you take the thing in from a distance and then you go huh well i'll be but like you don't you don't get to like touch it and and move it around and play with the thing and we have this real advantage of uh anytime we design an object we not only get to try to like I want you to have an experience like visually and emotionally but I also want you to physically engage with the thing and so how can I invite you to do specific how can I get you to uncover the puzzle in a particular order that's a really interesting question to me and the overwhelming majority of the time it's through like moving your eye or your hand from a to b to c that's so true and man not to not to like you know make the proportion of your head to the rest of your body too large but like i i want to like bring up the atlas table again and like just how fucking rad that is as a design and i'm sure that you've thought of this but like it's not a full spiral but like the curvilinear form of that base implies movement it wants to be moving and then the solid flat horizontal top prevents the movement of that curvilinear base and it just feels so fucking like when i look at that table i'm just like god i feel for that base man i feel for that base you did it you nailed it thanks buddy uh but one one of my favorite things about that particular spiral into the circle is how the movement never stops but it terminates right so like you're forced to to move up the object but then when you get to the top of the object it just keeps looping back around itself and your eye like it's just trapped within this thing here so awesome man yeah thanks buddy yeah any gallery that ever rejects that by the way has shit taste. I'm just throwing it out there. And I hope they're fucking listening to this right now. Wow. You guys, what a great discussion. I want to do two things. I want to end with two things before we go to the after show, which there will be a series of questions. There are so many great questions raised on Patreon that we are going to get into much to do about creativity and how do you harness some of this towards your creativity. There's two things I'd like to do before we end. The first thing, I would like to share my experience as sort of the outsider. I mean, you guys are on the same page, without a doubt. It's clear to me. I'm the outlier here. I didn't know any of this coming in. So I just want to say, I have always just winged it. I just kind of know when it looks wrong and I kind of know when it looks right. And I think a lot of our listeners are probably in that mode. They trust their gut and their gut is a bit of the lizard brain telling them what's right and wrong. And it's a bit of maybe cultural what they've learned based on cultural observation. and they put those together and they just say, well, I'll try this wood and I'll try this size and I'll do this and that doesn't look right. I'm going to change that. I don't like that pull. And it seems to me in now reflecting on what you both have told us that we are actually making decisions along the elements of art and principles of design without even knowing it. We're just using our lizard brain and our cultural upbringing to make these decisions. And that's what I have done. And fortunately for me, it has gone well. Maybe I don't know why. I don't know. But it's gone pretty well because most people seem to like my pieces and I like my pieces. But what you've given us today is a manual for how to intentionally use these and intentionally think about these. So I want to thank both of you. This is awesome, and I'm going to be thinking about this for months, I'm sure. I will never see things the same. And the second I want to end is a question that I thought was probably the best question maybe for this main segment, which is, which element or principle do you have to get right no matter what? Everything else can be spot on, but if that one element is off, the piece is ruined. And I love that question, Jim, the accidental woodworker. Nice job. What do you guys think is the most important of all we've talked about today? I have an answer, so you guys go first. Element or principle or element and principle? You decide. Like I have to stand on my morals and say if we're talking specifically about furniture, because I'm assuming this question comes from a furniture maker, If your proportions are fucked, you're toast. Like, that's it. The piece is trash. Jack? Eric's going to hate me, but I got to say unity. Ah, you motherfuckers. Because it's like, again, like, even people who don't consider themselves creative people, even if you go to bed and forget all of this, except the whole recipe analogy, if the vibes feel off and i've seen even the most aesthetically stupid motherfuckers be like be like i don't know man i just don't like it and they don't know why yeah but i know why i can't look and tell why so it's like if the vibe is off if the unity slash harmony you know is off it's like you gotta you gotta find the reason and i eric i agree with you though i'm almost like this it's not fair that that is a principle of design it's a vibe man uh-huh you know but that's the one for me though that's right i i don't disagree with your assessment yeah if the vibes are off if the unity is off it's up to you to figure out why but to me that's the that's the be all end all yeah okay oh guys god i see both of your points and they're two they're my top two answers if i have to pick one which one has absolutely destroyed me when i see a piece it's proportion yeah i just take it over it like i could forgive unity oh it's like every new woodworker pairs bright maple with a dark contrasting walnut and highly figured this the unity is all over the mat it's a mess but it's still like kind of okay if you squint but when the proportions are off it triggers disgust it's like god it's like a dude you've seen who clearly has been at the gym every day for the last six years but he's never fucking squatted in his life skipped leg day every day them skinny jeans are real fucking skinny home I mean, they're both important, but for me, it's just the just proportion gets a little edge to it. Anyway, guys, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Both of you are a wealth of information. I feel like I attended the coolest lecture ever. It's going to fuck me up because now I'm going to not trust my gut. And I'm going to be like, how's the unity? And all of a sudden, my pieces are going to go to hell because I'm overthinking everything. I mean, listen, there are people who are incredible musicians. They go through their entire lives never taking a music theory class and can write beautiful fucking music. And then the moment they learn that music theory exists, their career goes to hell. So just ignore everything that we just said and keep fucking doing you, boo. I hope every Eric, I hope that's not the case for me. But for everyone else, I hope you enjoyed that. I know you asked for it for a long time. Thank you for your patience and waiting. We're so happy. Jack, you are awesome. And Eric, the way you translated it into a woodworking lexicon or a woodworker's version of sort of these higher level principles was so great. We will see you in the after show where we will answer more questions about how this relates to creativity. If you want to get the after show, check us out on Patreon, where I will also post my elements and principles definitions that I give to all of my students from classes. So check that out up there. And Eric's Tasteful Nudes. We'll see you later. Bye. Bye.