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.

Lessons with Curly-queues

I've been working on a grapevine thumbprint piece for the last few weeks and it's been a lot of fun!  I started with a design that was completely made up of continuous curving lines with some curling tips.  I had a LOT of trouble working in watercolour and creating a continuous line.  I ended up changing the design (which worked out really well as it had more of my style to it) by making the grapevines much stronger and more stable-looking, while at the same time not having to worry about continuous lines.

And then, because it's me, I went and got myself a grape leaf as an example so that the leaves on the vine could look less design-y and more realistic.  Last, but not least, were the curly-queues on the vines.  You know, the little "grippers" that help the grapevine cling to surfaces and trees.

I'd never painted a spiral before and like many things that look pretty, but are small and elegant, I thought "How hard can it be".... I'll just pause for a moment so you can get the laughter out of your system...the short answer is - it takes practice.  A spiral is a very easy thing to draw, be it in pencil, or marker, or even crayon, because the drawing part doesn't move.  A paintbrush, on the other hand, moves quite a bit (as it should) and takes some practice to get used to the different "feel".

An important lesson that I learned from painting this way is that you don't want to focus too much on where your brush is at the moment, but where you want the brush to go.  This makes for a more smooth transition of line, less mistakes, and it's just plain prettier to look at!  Of course, since my life seems to be full of "life lessons" lately, I couldn't help but also notice how this applies to life as well.

It's just as important in life to know where you're going and how you will get there, as it is to know where you are and what you're doing.  Too much focus on where you are will likely keep you quagmired in the muck (if you're in a bad place) and unable to see beyond the "now" to where you could be with a bit of effort.  And, as in art, it's important to look up from time to time, take a step back and make sure that you're still heading in the right direction.  Or even determine whether what you are doing is working for you (or your art piece)!

That's my spiel for today :)

Skull - concept to finished piece

Oh my goodness!  I spent so much time watching art videos from Artist Network TV that I got nothing else done this weekend!!  I learned a LOT!  I was planning to apply some of my newfound knowledge in painting watercolour today, but I found that I was incredibly exhausted.  I know from past experience (and I've been instructed this way by Gordon MacKenzie) that if you are tired you shouldn't paint.  These two things just don't go well together!

So I took Mr. MacKenzie's advice and had a nap instead.  Since there is no progress to report today, I thought I might show some pics of the progress of the skull.  I don't think that I included any of the conceptual images in my previous posts.

So here's the original concept design:

Not much to look at is he?  But I think you can clearly see that I was trying to get the name to fit into the skull.  I had originally thought of adding a flame around the skull, but later discarded it.

This is a human skull image that I drew of an image I got off the net.  This is almost a medical drawing, but since I have never drawn a skull before, and I wanted it to be at least based on realism, I had t start somewhere.

You can see from these two images how I modified the original skull (traced it onto tracing paper then put a piece of paper on top to make a copy with modifications) and started to fill in the shapes.

This of course is the finished piece.  He came a long way from the concept image.  And I have to say that I had no idea how he would ultimately come out.  After I made my modifications, I mostly let the drawing decide what it wanted/needed to be complete.  I think this made it a better drawing because I had no real expectations.

Now if only I could do the same thing with painting!