Composition
Kerri Dixon 
My guide to help you find the best composition for your paintings
Best Composition for your Paintings
When creating a painting, we always want to be thinking about the composition and where we want our viewer to look. This can be achieved in a number of ways.
The overall good composition is what makes our work eye catching and pleasing to look at. A bad composition can make the viewer feel awkward and uncomfortable.
Composition can be very complex or as simple as you like, in this Gum Flower painting on the right, we are keeping it simple by using the Rule of Thirds. A very common rule and easy to use in your art and we are accomplishing this by marking our reference image into thirds and making sure that the main focus (flower heads) are on one of the intersecting points.
Another way to get the viewer to look where we want is by using certain colours, in this painting we are using mainly greens with a bright red/pink for the flowers. Plus red just happens to be the complimentary colour to green, so is a perfect combination. Nature at it’s best.
Contrast is used to make things pop, you can see we have quite a dark background where our brightest lights are, this is strong contrast and also draws the viewers eye.
And lastly we will be using focus to draw the viewer to our focal point. Again this is easily achieved by having the flower heads in the sharpest focus and the rest a bit blurry.
An artist uses all of these tools and more when planning out their own original artwork.
Listed here are probably 3 of the most used composition guides.
Rule of Thirds - Probably the simplest of all composition guides and if you only use just one then this is. The most important elements of your composition should be placed along the left or right vertical thirds and/or the top and bottom horizontal thirds.
In addition, the four intersections of these lines are called the “power points.” This is where a subject should be placed to give it emphasis, and it is here where the eye is automatically drawn.
Golden Mean - The golden ratio appears in some patterns in nature, a spiral shell for example. It has been used by the greatest painters to proportion their works and keep it aesthetically pleasing.
Diamond Guide - Probably the most complex but still can be used in most situations. This one is useful for creating strong lead lines to the focal point. Imagine where you might place a face, where the eyes will look.
I hope this gives you something to think about when next creating your own masterpiece. It's very important to get the composition right, that way your viewer will want to keep looking at your painting and in turn will want to buy your painting.
If you'd like to learn more about how to draw in soft pastels and charcoal with me, then why not get on the waitlist for my online membership "The Creative Barn". Doors are opening on March 7th where we are kicking off with a Coaching Week for only $10. Plus if you join the waitlist you will receive a free dog eye in graphite tutorial to keep you busy while your waiting.
CLICK HERE TO JOIN THE WAITLIST
Enjoy your week and keep creating!!
Kerri xx
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Categories: : beginner, composition, educational, fundamental
