Have you ever had a painting that was so frustrating to work with you just wanted to give up? Did you in fact give up with a frustrated scream? Have you ever worked on a piece for HOURS only to find out at the end that you hated it? I have to say that I feel your pain. I hate when I've worked on what seemed like a very promising piece for hours, or even days, to come out at the end with something that just lacked. The colours were great, the value scale was awesome, the details were perfect, but still it lacked. What a waste of time/energy/supplies!!! I don't know about you, but this sort of thing drives me bonkers!
Well, it may be that what you need is a polish on your composition skills. As I mentioned in my last post, I am working hard studying the various aspects of artistry. One of the things I'm studying is a book by Ian Roberts called "Mastering the Art of Composition". An excellent book, by the way, I highly recommend it.
In this book he talks about the aspects required in design and composition of art. What grabs your attention from across the room when you look a piece of art? Is it the subject matter? Not likely, as you probably can't quite see it. Is it the colours? Again not likely as they probably blend together a bit with distance. It could be the value contrasts, and/or the arrangement of the value shapes within the piece. I am simplifying here, after all, it takes Mr Roberts a whole book to explain this well.
He also talks about how composition and design have to be the FIRST things you think about, even before you start painting. If your composition is poor, nothing you do in painting (colour, value, intensity) will correct it and make it a good painting (sound familiar?).
He discusses the use of certain tools, like a viewfinder (he even describes how to make a pretty cool one yourself with some card and acetate), a grid of thirds, a thumbnail sketch, and a perceptional shift to see in value masses, not details. He advises studying paintings you like, that grab your attention, to learn what the artist did and improve your own compositions. Using paintings by the Old Masters (who had much fewer tools to work with than we do today) to discover how they achieved so much with so little.
Above all, Mr Roberts recommends doing "A Composition a Day" for a year or so. These should be small (4" x 5"), in pencil (say B, 2B, 4B) and use objects that are around you in your life. He compares it to practicing the scales on a piano every day. Nothing too drastic - keep it simple. If you work attentively and with purpose, daily for a year, you will see a dramatic improvement in your compositions - or so he says anyway. I intend to find out for myself and have started today with my first (hopefully of many) composition sketch.
This is my setup. I picked some toys from the girls that were simple shapes. He also advised that an object in space alone is not a composition. It's important to have a background to relate the objects to/with. Many of his examples showed a light and dark divided background, so I picked a black sketch book and a white binder for mine. My light source is single (mostly - I tried to ignore the light coming from the window on the left as it wasn't strong enough) and coming from the right.
And this is my composition sketch using the 3 recommended pencils. I can't say how well I followed Mr. Roberts' direction, but I think I did OK for my first attempt. It didn't take too long either - I'd say about 30 min from setup to finished drawing. The hard part was squinting to see the value masses and eliminate the detail from my setup. White objects would work better I suspect. I look forward to continuing this exercise tomorrow.
I'm not quite finished reading his book yet, only about halfway really. But so far it's been a highly educational read and I can see that if i stick to it, how my art will improve.
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