[burn0ut]

How do you study good composition?

[Rinaldo]

you mean how to you look for good composition? or where and how do you learn it?

I dunno. I'm pretty much at a loss on the subject. there was some threads a while back that probably have all the images missing.
someone needs to scan Loomis Creative Illustration or something.

I remember Ron (Fred) posted a whole bunch of scans from some book with some stuff on composition. but they are most likely not there anymore.

hehe well ain't I helpfull huh

someone please do a better job than me. I want to know too.

ICQ or E-mail me if you want me to try and find those images. they are here someplace.

I mostly just screw around with stuff until it stops looking "off". just eyeball it, and work out if it flows ok. which fails utterly when you aren't in the right mood.

[Lunatique]

If you want a whole book on composition, I don't think I've seen any. There are books that include a chapter on composition though.

There is one very basic and simple rule of composition:

Take a blank page and divide it into 4 equal spaces(2 across, 2 up and down). Now, the simple rule is, your main area of focus should fall in two of the best possible area on a page: 1)somewhere within or close to one of the 4 spaces. 2)Dead center.

Now, dead center works for certain types of work, but usually, the most interesting compositions have their main focus in one of the 4 corners.

Here's an example of weak composition. Let's say you are doing a space scene. Having all the elements of your piece in the center is very boring. Your eyes don't get to bounce around the picture and get challenged. None of the lines, angles, curves or spaces leads your eyes anywhere.


This is a much better composition. The areas of focus makes you look at the whole picture from one corner to another. There's weight to the areas of focus because they offset the negative space in other corners.



Think also of intersecting lines, angles, and negative space.

This first one is very dead. There arent' any interesting intersection lines or angles.


Now, you have more movement in the spacing of these objects. The lines, angles and curves lead your eyes to bounce around.


I don't have to much time to get into hyper detailed discussions in composition. Most of what I know is really just instinctive, since I've never gone to art school. But, these rule apply to all areas of art and design. Whether you are doing a portrait, web design, illustration, comics..etc, these general rules of composition will always apply. All of these ideas could be applied to organic subjects as well. The parts of the human body(or animal), shape of clouds, mountains, planets, furniture..etc, they are all similar to basic geometric shapes(or combinations of), with lines, curves, and angles. Think of them that way and you'll be improving in your composition in no time. Make several versions of rough sketches with different composition, and pick one that is the strongest.


Artist to look at for excellent composition:

Michael Whelan--even his sketches and color comps display mastery of composition. He really knows how to balance his spaces and use very effective values.

Artist to look at for very poor composition:

Jim Burns-- His recent works are better, but until the recent years, his composition was very poor and uninteresting. Not only that, his colors and values were pretty scary as well. This, of course excludes the pieces when he obviously used photo references heavily.

Hope this helped.

[ July 22, 2001: Message edited by: Lunatique ]

[burn0ut]

yea i have those pages around somewhere too.. i dunno i have a problem pushin the right colors i think... like i remember ceenda talking about how certain colors go along some lines that brings out the subject more or something, but i couldnt grasp it at the time.
hummedee dum
thanks anyways rinaldo ;D