Compose styles
Rather than blending styles toward a middle, this gives them roles. The first one carries the structure, the next comes in as the accent, and anything after that shows up in a single detail. Where they fight each other, it says so before you start.
How to divide the work
- Composition
- Follow Burle Marx Landscape: Curves divide the plane, straight lines kept to paving edges
- Type
- Set in Burle Marx Landscape's manner (One species per large block, planes told apart by leaf and color), and let Naturalistic Planting's lettering (Perennials and grasses, few species repeated in large masses) appear only where you want the eye to catch.
- Material
- Ground in Burle Marx Landscape's material (The figure drawn in stone paving, water used as empty space); bring in exactly one thing from Naturalistic Planting (A single cut in spring, seed heads and stems left standing).
- Colour
- Build on #eeedf3, #69885f, #30392c and admit one accent from #bdb888, #6d3a5d, #29361f.
Where they fight
- Burle Marx Landscape and Naturalistic Planting both belong to Garden Styles, so the difference is small. Push the roles further apart than feels comfortable.
Caution
- Burle Marx Landscape Drawing the curves as decoration while ignoring growth rates lets the blocks break down within years and the color edges go muddy.
- Naturalistic Planting Copying the look by adding species lets the strongest grasses smother the rest by the second year, and the drift turns into weeds.
Image prompt
Produce four original images that take their structure from Burle Marx Landscape (style, 1930s–1994) and their accent from Naturalistic Planting (style, 1990s–). ## What to make Make the kind of thing Burle Marx Landscape exists for: designing a plaza or roof plane as one picture read from above, or making leaf form and color contrast the subject with tropical species. Choose one subject and hold it across all four. ## Structure comes from Burle Marx Landscape - Planting as color fields - Organic curves in plan - The tropical palette - Paving as graphic Composition: Curves divide the plane, straight lines kept to paving edges. Type and lettering: One species per large block, planes told apart by leaf and color. ## Accent comes from Naturalistic Planting, used sparingly - Perennial and grass communities - The beauty of dieback - Drifts of planting - Ecology as the model Let one material quality come from it: A single cut in spring, seed heads and stems left standing. ## Colour and feeling Build the ground on #eeedf3, carry the structure in #69885f and #30392c, and let a single accent come from #6d3a5d. These are read off real works, so a direction rather than a fixed palette. Feeling to carry: exhilaration, play, futurity, calm, intimacy. ## Where they fight - Burle Marx Landscape and Naturalistic Planting both belong to Garden Styles, so the difference is small. Push the roles further apart than feels comfortable. ## What goes wrong - Burle Marx Landscape: Drawing the curves as decoration while ignoring growth rates lets the blocks break down within years and the color edges go muddy. - Naturalistic Planting: Copying the look by adding species lets the strongest grasses smother the rest by the second year, and the drift turns into weeds. ## Across the four Keep the roles fixed in all four. Vary the framing, the scale and the arrangement so the set shows what this pairing can do rather than four versions of one picture. ## Constraints - Do not imitate, reference or name any specific artist, studio, brand, character or copyrighted work. - Do not reproduce the composition of an existing work. - Produce original compositions in the general period languages described above.
Related entries
- Burle Marx Landscape 1930s–1994 / Style / Garden Styles
The inventor of modernist landscape, massing Brazilian tropical plants in color fields like abstract painting. As the Copacabana wave pavement shows, he designed the ground as one graphic.
- Naturalistic Planting 1990s– / Style / Garden Styles
Planting design modeled on perennial meadow ecologies, led by Piet Oudolf: beauty extended to the dead seed heads of winter, a year-round idea rewriting urban public space from the High Line outward.
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