Composition

COMPOSITION

>What is composition? - the selection and arrangement of appropriate elements within the picture space. Express what the artist wants to say.

>What can good composition achieve? - Gives the viewer a satisfied sense of order and beauty.

>Four main elements - Frame, Depth, Line of sight and Value (shape & frequency)

>First thing to do when thinking about composition? - Place the elements as simple shapes

>What's the difference between sketching and making artwork? - Sketching is the starting point and artwork is the finished work. 

CONSIDER

>Foreground, midground, background

>Balance of colour and value

>Line of sight

>Negative space

>Perspective

>Viewpoint

>Overlapping objects

>Anything else that you feel, see, observe

• Michael Kirkham - perspective, geometric, selective colour - block, subdued, flat
• Robert Heindel - Bold bright colours, contrasts normal white hospital, angle, perspective 
• Serena Katt - Colour shows mood - depressed, height order shows authority, line of sight

TASK

Design 5 different compositional sketches of the same three elements

>Figure

>Object

>Background (Landscape, scenery) 

ROUGHS!

A5

Ideas

>I was worried at the beginning of this task because composition is something I really struggle with. I can do something if it's just an object in the middle of a page but creating an illustration with lots of elements is quite scary and new for me. But, I was glad to be given this task because this is something that I definitely need to address and finally conquer!

extremely rough roughs

>I started by doing roughs, thinking about what we learnt in the presentation about only using very basic shapes to create the composition. Rotating the different elements around by changing the size of them. I also didn't want to make it too busy, because I think that simple compositions can sometimes be the most successful, as the eye doesn't get too caught up looking around everywhere. 

Roughs

Roughs

>I thought mainly about size and how that creates the perspective and FMB. I had the idea of having the horse right at the front and highly detailed then have the figure and background not very detailed and (the figure) really small and quite insignificant. 

rough drawings

material testing

>I also tested out different materials to see what ones would work best for my final artwork. I decided that pencil was too much of an obvious choice, so went to watercolour which creates a soft gentle mood which I thought worked well as I'm doing a sunset in the background. 

>I decided to split the image into two, so I could be more experimentive on photoshop and combine the two together and maybe make them overlap a little bit and see what I come up with. I'm happy with how the horse turned out, with the high amount of detail compared to the background and figures which is what I initially wanted. 

FINAL 

>When I first completed this I was happy with it, I thought that the overlay was interesting and different, giving it an abstract feel. But after looking at this more, there's many things that I would do differently now.

1) I think I should have just painted it as one big picture, there isn't really a need for the overlay. It would have looked more aesthetically pleasing if it was more realistic.

 2) The size of the horse is the only thing that the eye focuses on so much that everything else is just insignificant. 

3) It's evident that the time spent painting the horse took away time I could have spent thinking more about the composition and the aesthetics of the background and figures. I need to learn how to spread my time evenly over period given to make all the elements look as good as each other.
4) No narrative - another thing I really struggle with. I focus too much on something looking pretty rather than the actual concept/narrative behind the work, making it a nice to look at drawing rather than an illustration.

>Although this didn't turn out as successful as I had hoped, I'm glad that I've picked up on these things so I can learn for next time. I know I can conquer composition!!