Composition: Understanding it - Using it! (4/4)
Author: Larry Seiler, Contributing Editor
If you have problem squinting, let me convert this image into a greyscale image, so that the values are easier to judge.
Now, I'd like us to take a look at a bit more of a complicated composition that I have done which at first observation appears to ignore the dangers of having too many positive elements. If we count the elements as objects, then yes, there is a great deal happening. However, if we break them down into values alone, or even similarity in color, we have simplified that which is complex into an easier to view composition. Squint your eyes, and see that there exists basically about 3 values of light and dark.
The sky reflection was very important to keep the piece from monotony, and to tie the painting together. Note that the same cool color and value have been used to place highlights on the cattail grasses, spots on the water, flowers along the lower shore's edge. Well, that's it. I hope you'll chew over the information I've put together for you here in this lesson, and begin to look for a sense of design in other's works as well as begin to expect it in your own. See how other's succeed, and imitate that. Know when other's fail, so you do not have to repeat their mistakes!
Do a scribble drawing as I demonstrated, and judge the positive and negative elements compositionally. Is there a good sense of the eye finding ease moving throughout the picture? Do the shapes invite the eye to flow up..over, then down, across, etc.? As complicated as the piece appears to be does it feel difficult to make sense of the work?
Larry is a contributing editor to WetCanvas! and can be reached via email at: lseiler@wetcanvas.com. He can also be found lurking in the WetCanvas! message boards. Larry's works are also available for sale at our sister site, www.art-agent.com.
After 20 years experience as a musician and winning Midwest wildlife artist, Larry Seiler, (winner of Wisconsin's 1984 Wildlife Artist of the Year, and Wisconsin's 1998 Inland Trout Stamp) finds a reinvention of himself over the last 2-3 years with a passion for landscape painting. His pursuit of the contemplative and spiritual sanity in life finds a special connection with his love of direct on location painting often referred to as "Plein Air."
Larry is represented by Art International, and his work is in a number of Midwest galleries including Grassland Gallery in the Mall of America. His background includes teaching art education for the public schools, participation in artist's workshops, travels and seminar speaking. Larry's works are primarily oils and acrylics, with the practice often of doing plein air studies to produce larger in-studio images.