COMPOSITION
Composition – the Foundation of Good painting.
Composition is understanding how to compose a piece of artwork. It is one of our most valuable tools and understanding composition gives the artist an idea of how to plan and design a painting. The modules below will introduce you to composition and then how it is used in Landscape, portraiture, still life, and animal portraiture.
Composition In Animal Portraiture
All of the Composition modules give you an overall picture of how to use Composition- which means do go through all of the modules so that you get a more complete picture.
As popular as animal portraiture is, a trained eye can easily see when the artist has just ‘copied’ a photo when a little knowledge of composition could easily have improved the portrait. More often than not the artist is working from available photography which is not always the best. But this video gives some guidelines based on my 40 years as a professional portrait painter.
As always, when planning your portrait you need to think about the Focal point and how to place that focal point in the most effective place, how to support it and how to judge what to leave in your painting and what should perhaps be omitted.
Learning about Composition is a game changer. It will put you in charge of your paintings when using photographs as well as from life.
