Preparing a Composition - in 8 steps

In continuance with my earlier post regarding Ian Roberts' book "Mastering Composition", I wanted to lay out the steps of creating a finished composition both to formalize it in my mind and to share it with others.  You may want to grab a coffee or something, this may take a bit of time.

1) So, let's say you want to do a painting/drawing/etc.  What's the first thing you do?  I'm pretty sure it will be to choose your subjects.  Will it be a still-life/portrait/landscape?  Will it be from a reference photo or from life?  etc, etc...  Okay, you've answered these questions and prepared your subject.  Now what?

For an example, I'm going to use this frog clip art image.  Isn't he cute?!

2) The very next thing that should happen is deciding what size the final piece will be.  This is important because when you start your thumbnail sketch, you will need to know the proportions for each side of the thumbnail.  Otherwise you get a great thumbnail that you can't transfer properly to your final medium because the proportions are all wrong (trust me people this is very frustrating!).  So, taking the final piece dimensions, determine the dimensions required of the thumbnail sketch.

Now, there are going to be about 3 stages of drawing here, so stay with me.

3) Lay out the dimensions of the thumbnail sketch on a piece of paper or sketchbook.  It shouldn't be too large, but also it shouldn't be too small.  Start at around 2:3 to begin at first, adjust these dimensions accordingly for your finished piece.

4) Using a light touch with the pencil, divide the square/rectangle into 9 even squares (think tic-tac-toe board).  This "grid of thirds" is an important component for composition.  It allows a natural and pleasing arrangement of your subject to the final work and provides 36 reference points.  It also helps to align things up vertically and horizontally, as well as providing a simple means for finding angles easily.




When laying out your drawing, try to think in terms of composition.  What shape armature will you be using?  How will the focal point stand out?  How will you draw the viewer's eye to the focal point?

5) Now it's time to lay in your subjects onto the grid.  Try not to be  too detailed at this stage.  Just rough in the shapes, proportions, and angles.  Now, work in the values - keeping in mind that your primary subject/focal point should have the most dramatic contrast (lightest lights and darkest darks), while the surroundings should have less contrast.

                                                                                     

                   
                                                 

                                                                                                           
6) Take a step back and look at your thumbnail sketch.  Is the image appealing?  Do the shapes draw your eye?  If not, it's just a thumbnail, try again but change some element.  If your first attempt was a landscape/horizontal orientation, try again in a portrait/vertical orientation.  Try placing the focal point somewhere on or very close to the innermost square/rectangle on your grid of thirds.  Zoom in.  Zoom out.  Simplify.  I think you get the idea.

7) When you have a successful thumbnail sketch, it's time to translate that into a drawing with details.  Get yourself a piece of sketch paper (it doesn't have to be fancy, even computer paper will do).  Enlarge the dimensions of the thumbnail sketch appropriately to the sketch paper.  Copy your image, this time adding any of the minor details you left out of the thumbnail sketch.  Use your grid of thirds to help transfer the image accurately.  Be sure to keep the values from the thumbnail sketch for your drawing.

                            



You may find this step more challenging than the thumbnail sketch.  I find that sometimes it takes me a few tries to get the dimensions right with a bigger picture.  Pencil lightly so you can erase easily, start over if you have to (I know I have).  Okay, great - you now have a map for your finished piece!  The majority of the hard work is done, it's time now to play in your favourite medium to create your piece.

8) By whatever means you are most comfortable, transfer your image to the canvas/paper/etc.  If you need to enlarge it from your sketch, try another grid of thirds, or if it's the exact right size, use a lightbox/window to transfer it directly.  Block in your large colours/values first (obviously this would go a little differently if you're working in water-colour, so adjust this accordingly).  Slowly build up your colour/value layers to the detail point, all the time following your map.


                                              
                                                                                           
It's important to stay alert and focused in this step.  It can be very easy to let the mind relax and just go through the motions, but that's when mistakes happen and you can't always correct them easily.  Pause every so often to step back and check your progress against your map.  Hopefully though, everything has gone very well and you have a finished piece that you can be proud of!
  




I know that this is a lot of steps.  And I'm sure you shook your head at me a few times and said "But I just want to paint!".  Believe me, I'm with you.  This is a LOT of work, and there are times when you can just go play with your paints and see what comes out.  Experiment, have fun.  But there are also times when you'd like to do something a little more formal.  Something that reflects your skill and talent for any viewer to see.  That's when these steps become important.  And the good news is, if you like the final result, you can easily try another painting of the same subjects with different colours, or colour relationships because you already have a map laid out and ready to go!

If you're having difficulty working with these steps, I highly recommend Ian Roberts' idea of "A Composition A Day".  I've been doing it for a week or so now and it's really helped me see the steps more clearly and better understand my options (which seem infinite) and how to use them.

If you have any questions or comments about these steps I'd love to hear from you :)

Mastering Composition

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.