At their roots, both pattern and rhythm rely on repetition — repetition of shape, color, concept, etc. Repetition sets up expectations for the viewer that the artist can then use to convey calm or chaos, and everything in between.
Let’s look at how we can use this rhythm and pattern in art.
Pattern
A deceptively simple way to add texture and depth to a drawing or painting is to include a pattern. The pattern may be complex and detailed, or just a swatch of stripes or dots. Sometimes many patterns can be brought together into a single image. When done well, these patterns can help round out a flatter form, or perhaps subtly insert a conceptual theme into the image.
Here we can use it to blend everything together — nothing stands out, and the picture plane becomes a texture rather than a narrative image.
Here, too. See how the stripe patterns wrap around the forms.
Even here, with the variety of pattern, there is so much of it that we don’t see any one part as more prominent than any other.
Rhythm
A close cousin to pattern is rhythm. If we view the image like a musical score, as we read across the picture, each element strikes a certain note and tone. The image’s elements are gathered into the picture, but it takes repetition of color, shape, texture, etc., to create the rhythm to make it all work together.
Watch how altering the trees changes how we read the picture. First they are spaced evenly, like they were planted for timber. There is a lot of control and order here — it suggests formality, and someone or something exerting control over the landscape. It is like a march.
But now see how the syncopated clusters of trees feels like a more natural organization. The beaver has been here among the aspens, and his tree-felling activities has inserted a rest in this organic rhythm before it picks up again. These trees are more improvisational and jazz-like.
Capturing the viewer’s attention
With both pattern and rhythm, variations and anomalies leap out at us. This works because the initial repetition sets up expectations, but then we subvert that expectation, and the altered elements draw our attention.
The regular shape of the square — at the window, on the pillow, with the picture frame — gives the image a subtle
structure.
But tilt the picture frame just a bit, and our eye is drawn to it, trying to “fix” the problem area in the image.
Another way to alter the square is to put something inside of it. This time our eye goes to the window.
Anything that varies from what the image sets us up to expect is going to call for our attention.
All together now
Mixing it up a bit, we can see how something patterned in a context of solid shapes and colors calls attention to itself.
Or we can find rhythm within a pattern.
Or a pattern within rhythm.
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