lost and found edges: controlling hard and soft edges in painting

Learn to vary hard, soft and lost edges in oil painting, with steps from classic manuals and four masterworks to study for edge control.

7 min read

An edge is the place where one shape stops and another begins, and every edge you paint makes a decision about how much that boundary should say. A hard edge is crisp and draws attention. A soft edge blends a shape into its neighbour. A lost edge disappears entirely, so the eye completes the form for itself. Painting every edge the same way gives you one of two faults. Solomon describes a head whose edges were too clearly cut and not lost and found enough against a dark background as having a hard tinniness [1]. He also describes over-modelled work, with its edges lost almost completely, as fluffy and lacking in solidity [2]. This guide shows you how to vary edges on purpose.

What you need

Oil paints in a restricted range. For a first head study, raw umber alone is enough, and Solomon notes that it is good practice to make the best of restricted materials [3].
A large brush for covering tone and a smaller brush for a decisive edge.
A clean, dry, soft brush for softening, kept separate from your painting brushes.
A rag for wiping brushes between edges.
A subject with a clear light source: a plaster cast, a head from life, or a good reproduction of a masterwork.
A mirror to check your study with fresh eyes.

Step by step

Paint the background first, not too solidly, in its tone relation to your subject. Half-close your eyes to judge its depth [4].
Paint the middle tone of the subject thinly with a large brush, right up to the background, so that the edges melt [4]. At this stage you are covering the canvas and getting the relation between subject and ground, not defining outlines.
Add the shadows and half-tone, then the lighter and darker passages. Only after that, look to the edges against the background [3].
Half-close your eyes again. They will show you which parts of the outline tend to lose themselves in the background [3]. Mark those stretches in your mind as lost edges, and treat the rest as candidates for found edges.
Lose and find the outline. Solomon's reason is that it rids the edge of any sense of hardness and suggests the form turning towards the planes beyond [3]. Where the form turns away from the light, let the edge dissolve. Where it meets the background firmly, state it.
Soften while the paint is wet. Solomon says that when the setting and the flesh are both wet, little softening of the lighter parts of the outline is needed [3]. Choose which edge to blur before it dries so you do not have to rework it.
Soften sparingly. Solomon advises softening the hair into the forehead and the outline into the background only very little, or freshness and the character of the brushwork may go [5]. The frank touches give the work vitality [5].
Treat the hair edge with the same discrimination as the face. Handled badly against the forehead, the hair may look like a wig [2]. Paint the hair as simple shapes of shadow, middle colour and light rather than separating individual hairs [5].
For a profile or other long contour, blur the edge from the face side first. Then draw the line with the brush from the background side, using a brush full of the colour the background is immediately against the face. Note where the edge is sharp and where it is more lost [6]. This lets you state the contour with decision without worrying about losing the drawing.
Step back and half-close your eyes one last time. If every edge reads with the same sharpness, go back and lose some and sharpen others.

Edges beyond the figure

The same thinking applies to landscape. Speed describes how Corot, looking at trees with a wide focus, ignored individual leaves and resolved them into masses of tone, lost in one place and found more sharply against the sky in another. The smaller masses of foliage inside are treated the same way [7]. Speed adds that a few leaves or a bough can be indicated sharply against the sky, but only on top of that mass of tone [7]. He also says that for any form with a serrated edge you should find some large order to which the fussiness of the edge conforms [7]. Do not paint leaf by leaf. Decide the big shape first and let the broken edge serve it.

Reflections follow a related rule. Ruskin says that at the edge of the water you should not see where reality ceases and reflection begins, and he asks for the most exquisite softening of the reflection's edge [8]. A hard line there is a sign of a confused drawing.

Common mistakes

Cutting every edge cleanly. The head looks hard and tinny, as in Solomon's criticism of edges not lost and found enough [1].
Softening the outline away all the way round. Solomon warns that woolliness results, and that light and solidity suffer [3].
Over-graduating the planes as well as the edges. Solomon contrasts the fluffiness of over-modelling with Velazquez, whose planes stay distinct and whose edges are not so completely lost [2].
Blending the whole surface to a uniform smoothness, which loses the freshness and the character of the brushwork [5].
Fussing over every notch in a serrated edge, such as foliage, instead of finding the large order that governs it [7].
Painting a profile line from the face side while worrying about losing the drawing. Come at it from the background side instead [6].
Drawing reflection edges hard, so the image appears to stop at a line [8].
Making edge decisions before the tonal relations are right. The thin first covering of tone comes first, and the edges are refined afterward [4][3].

Study these paintings

In portrait-of-a-gentleman-bust-length-in-a-black-coat-within-a-painted-oval-by-lemuel-francis-abbott, the face and hair are handled with soft, blended edges, and the face leaves the background through value rather than line. Look for the edges that are lost in shadow, and for the one place the record singles out as found, where the white cravat meets the coat. Then compare those with the painted oval, which keeps a hard edge as a containing boundary. Together they show a hard edge placed deliberately among soft ones.

In self-portrait-by-joseph-farquharson, edges are soft and blended throughout, and the jacket and the background dissolve into feathered strokes with no hard outline. The exception is the mustache, which is rendered with slightly stiff horizontal marks that make a crisp tonal boundary rather than a line. Notice how one small area of definition stands out against so much softness, and how form comes from value relationships rather than edge articulation.

In st-paul-by-diego-vel-zquez, the figure transitions to the background with no hard contour, and the edges there are soft and lost. The face blends values across its planes with essentially invisible brush marks. Look at the drapery, where the major fold ridges and shadow terminations get slightly more definition, though still feathered. This is a useful lesson in grading edge strength within a single picture: the face is softest, the folds slightly firmer.

In paddys-clothes-market-sandgate-by-ralph-hedley, even the foreground figures have rounded, blended contours rather than hard boundaries. The background water and buildings blur deliberately into atmosphere, so that edge softness helps create recession as much as value does. Compare the figures with the distant buildings and notice how little separates them in sharpness, and how the brushwork follows the cloth folds and figure forms.

In on-the-waste-lands-near-kalocsa-by-marianne-stokes, the edges are consistently soft, especially in the sky, where cloud forms dissolve gently into one another. Against that, the tree trunks are thin, precise lines threaded through the canopy. Look at how those few firm lines read against the scumbled, dotted foliage around them.

Sources

The Practice of Oil Painting (Solomon J. Solomon (1910)), THE BRITISH SCHOOL
The Practice of Oil Painting (Solomon J. Solomon (1910)), PAINTING FROM LIFE
The Practice of Oil Painting (Solomon J. Solomon (1910)), PAINTING FROM LIFE
The Practice of Oil Painting (Solomon J. Solomon (1910)), MONOCHROME STUDY
The Practice of Oil Painting (Solomon J. Solomon (1910)), PAINTING IN COLOUR FROM LIFE
The Practice and Science of Drawing (Harold Speed), ILLUSTRATING VARIETY IN SYMMETRY
The Practice and Science of Drawing (Harold Speed), C. From "La Vergine," by Giovanni Bellini in the Accademia, Venice.]
The Elements of Drawing (John Ruskin)