Introduction to Painting Composition - Oil Painting Basics

1. Introduction: Hello and welcome. I am so glad you are here. For those of you who are new to me, my name is Elizabeth Floyd and I have been an artist since 2009. Prior to transitioning from full time art, I practiced architecture for nearly a decade. And my journey to being a full time artist has been a very rewarding experience and journey. I firmly believe that anyone can improve their artistic skills. I believe that skill growth can be gained incrementally and that you can achieve mastery in painting realistically in a very steady and sustainable pace. Me, painting is the merging of two parts of the creative process. And that is the first part is the actual physical act of painting. And then the second is all the intellectual aspects that support us as artists. And those intellectual aspects enables us to better communicate and connect with the viewers of our art. And to me, that's what art is. Art is a form of visual communication where we are making connections with those that view our art. And that's what we're going to be learning about in this class. This class is a class that we focus on composition. And composition is the intellectual foundation of organizing all those elements that go into our paintings to create a cohesive and unified piece of art. And the composition is a gigantic topic. So I don't have time to share all the nuances of this very vast subject. But instead, I'm going to focus on the three components that I think are the most important. This is an introduction to composition class, and I will be teaching you what I consider to be the most important components of composition. And those three items are. First, your format, which is your picture play. Two, your focal point or your center of interest. And then three, the idea of arranging the objects in your painting to create a sense of movement and also a sense of balance. It is my hope that in this class, I will provide you with the knowledge and confidence to begin your painting compositions with purpose and intention. Okay, let's get started. 2. What is Composition: Composition is how to organize a painting to support your artistic idea. I believe being an artist is a fine balance between the mental and physical activity that's incorporated into the paintings that you create. So like, you know, we have to apply paint to the canvas or pencil to paper or pestle to paper or watercolor, you know, I mean, even clay or acrylic, all of those, you know, or even if you're doing embroidery, the concepts I'm teaching about composition, are the same there too. And it's a combination of that physical, but also it's the mental, that understanding, like, that artistic idea. What are you sharing with that artistic idea? And typically behind that artistic idea is an emotion. You know, you're sharing joy, you're sharing serenity. You're sharing deprivation, which you know, that's, like, the more Macabre paintings, like, think of Edward Munch. You know, but, I mean, like, typically, there's always an emotion that is underpinning that artistic idea. And why do we have that? Why do we even have that idea? Because art is about communication. And so, you know, we want our art to communicate with others in the world. And make that connection. So all engaging art includes starts with an idea and the most effective way of presenting your idea is having a strong composition that draws the viewer into your work. Let's go there. The idea of a painting. As artists, it's your job to develop the artistic idea behind the painting. This is inspired by all sorts of things that you're going to find in your life. The one responsibility as an artist is it is your responsibility to figure out how to start interpreting those visual cues that you see out in the world and translating them and putting them onto your canvas. The next line that I'm going to say, expression implies emphasis and selection. To me, that is, like, our role as artists. Our expression automatically implies what we want to emphasize and what we're selecting out in the world to then, interpret and then transfer and communicate with our viewers, whoever they are in the world. This is why how you design your composition for your art is so important. Expression implies emphasis and selection. I cannot emphasize that enough. And in fact, that little tiny keynote phrase has been a reminder that I get once a week on my iPhone at I think it's like at 7:00 A.M. On Saturday. And that's why? Because Saturday mornings are my most relaxed mornings. But there are also in the mornings that I do the leisure reading of art books and magazines and stuff. And so it helps trigger my intention of what I'm trying to do as an artist. You know, there are times when we are emotionally moved by a subject. These feelings are what you seek to capture in your work, and the paintings you compose are the visual reactions to your emotional response to the subject. I also want to encourage you to when you're struck by something. Explore doing thumbnails. I am a big believer and you cannot do enough thumbnails. Half of my thumbnails never get turned into a painting, but they help inform you. Like, for example, I did a painting very close to this composition last week. It's not the same, but it had elements of that in there. And I've totally done. All of these compositions I've kind of done at one point or another are some variation of it. When you are struck by something that you see visually in the world, I want to encourage you to slow down, raise your awareness of that subject matter by asking yourself questions about, well, what are the shapes? What are the colors? Are there something specific about the values that, like, catch your attention? Think about how you might want to interpret that into a painting. Sometimes you won't you won't know how you'll want to ultimately interpret it. But by taking time when you're not actually behind a canvas and thinking through and, like, potentially visualizing, like, the steps you would take to create a painting helps you get that paint. So much of painting, I think, is done in the mind before we even put paint to canvas. Introduction to composition. The goal of learning to compose a painting is to integrate all the components of the composition. And these components are diverse, and there's a lot of them. Like your format, your focal point, in line, shape, or form. Shape, if you're doing shape applies both abstractly and also when you're rendering three dimensional shape, form oftentimes does mean the three dimensionalness of an image on a two dimensional picture plane. Values, color, texture, rhythm and balance, rhythm is the movement. Balance is the stillness in your composition. Unity and variety, do you have things that are repetitive and create a sense of unified feeling in the painting or you have things that introduce variety and the excitement that variety tends to bring into a painting pattern, and there's so many more. The challenge is that these components need to be combined carefully to create a unified painting that engages the viewer. So you must have some variety, but you absolutely always have to have some aspect of unity in your piece or everything to hang together and engage your viewer. For this class, we will only be focusing on three components that I feel are the most important to get started because this is composition is a big is a big subject matter. The components we will focus on today are the format, the focal point or center of interest is another way of calling your focal point. And then the idea of balance and or movement, the sense of balance, the sense of movement. Sometimes I also use the term rhythm that is in your painting. In my mind, these concepts are the most important and basic components of composition. Because of this, I thought this would be a good place to start with these three components. 3. How the Format Affects Your Painting: So the first object is the format. And the format is your starting point for all compositions because it is the shape of your canvas or your panel or your piece of paper. And when creating two dimensional work, you have essentially three shapes to choose from. You have your vertical rectangle, your horizontal rectangle, or your square or squarish rectangle. Vertical tends to suggest dignity, horizontal can suggest calm or serenity, and square always has the potential of doing both. Another term for your format is your picture plane. And the picture plane that is your flat two dimensional painting surface. So I tend to use format or picture plane interchangeably when I'm talking about things. When you start painting, like, there's some simple elements of your composition. There's your format. Then there's line, shape, and value. And you start with a format. You know, one of the first things you do as an artist when you are there at your painting is even if you're an artist who paints by painting shapes down first, that shape usually goes down first as a line. And then, you know, think about it, if you took that line and then extended it to the edges of your format, you have automatically cropped your picture plane into two shapes. Now, those two shapes have a relationship with themselves. And also the edges of your picture format. And then if you add value to one of those shapes that you bisected your picture plane, now you've altered the relationship between line, shape, and value. And then, like, you know, and then as you go further and further, it becomes just a little bit more nuanced. I'm going to Let's look at these three examples and see how important their original format is in engaging and reinforcing the emotive quality of the painting. Vertical format tends to identify dignity, horizontal suggests calm, relaxation, soothing emotions. And then square has the opportunity to do either. And for those of you who ever painted in an oval, like a Tondo shape, I most often than not that a lot of the compositional cues that are related to atando can be ident are more like a square, like the ideas that support a square composition. Okay, so here is a portrait of a Venetian doge by Giovanni Bellini, and, you know, it's he painted it in a vertical format. This is an amazingly dignified painting. I mean, it is, to me, the definition of dignity. When I was thinking about how I was going to teach the different formats immediately that came to my mind. This painting came to my mind. There's so many others, but this one was like, This one is the ultimate and, like, a sense of dignity. Now, if we wanted to play around and give it a horizontal format, automatically, the feeling of the painting adjusts just a bit. And then, like, if we also do change it to a square format, that also alters the overall impression of the painting. And, you know, and that is the composition. Belini chose to tighten in and actually even cut off some of the edge of his shoulders to really make that tight portrait of this Doge's, you know, very static still face. He's got almost a smile but not quite. He's got wrinkles from, like, you know, because he's a man of dignity. And so, format influences your composition significantly. When I was thinking about, an example for a horizontal complex composition, I was thinking about Claude Monet. I love his paintings. I love and his horizontal paintings, they've always got a sense of summer idol, you know, the dllic sense of life in the country. And this painting really, in my opinion, kind of epitomizes that. And then, if we converted the horizontal to a vertical format or a square format, automatically, I feel that that sense of of open space relaxation starts to shift a bit. The vertical one, totally, to me, immediately shifts to a much stronger dignified it becomes a little bit more dignified. And then the square one becomes neither dignified, but neither fully calm. And in this scenario, for this one, a square composition would not be the solution, you know, for truly engaging the emotional quality of the subject matter for a viewer. Now, this painting is not 100% square, but it's squarish. It's well, being flower painters, it's also an amazingly delightful and engaging painting, or I think so at least. Absolutely It's got everything I love in it. Colorful zigas, a cool pot, and a book. I mean, that's everything. But, what I found fascinating is that this painting, when it's horizontal and this is a four to five ratio, when I think about my formats, I always like to think about the ratios. There are certain ratios that are very, very wonderful for us humans. We go towards them. Four to five is an eight by ten ratio. Two to three is, say, six by nine ratio. But there's all these wonderful ratios. Like there's also a three to four ratio that is like an 18 by 24. And all these ratios, a lot of ratios are very, very good for Like, we humans like them, and they all tend to be ratios that relate to the human figure, actually. They're like the joints of some of the ratios can be actually even related to, like, the ratio of your hand to your arm. It's actually really cool. I did, but I digress. But with this one, I found what I find fascinating is that the horizontal ratio of four to five and a true square and the actual square ish format, which this is probably like a it's probably ten wide and nine tall, all have kind of the same feeling to it. It's this vertical example that I think really changed the feeling of the composition really does change. And it's always fascinating to play with a composition and then, like, ask, like, Well, what would happen if I, you know, amped up something? So I encourage you if y'all find a painting, that you like to explore and, like, play around with that composition and see, like, could it be improved? What happens if you change it and does it actually go down south or does it actually improve? So once you know what you want to paint and you have decided what you want to focus on the ideas, decide on your format. If you're going with a rectilinear composition, you have three choices horizontal, vertical, or square. 4. Tips about Establishing the Focal Point: The focal point or your center of interest. And this is important for your composition because it's the cat's meow. It, it is the idea or it should be the idea of what you're trying to truly express in a painting and ignore the rest of what you see. The goal of a painting is to express the artistic idea, not to include everything within your field of vision. Determine the focal point before you begin painting. The focal point also is tied to your idea. It's the emotional tug that inspired you to start the painting. And this is a big caveat, guys. If the focal point and your idea behind the painting are not the same, be prepared for a weak composition because those two elements of your painting will always be competing for interest in diluting the visual impact. A painting is a clearly organized view with a specific hierarchy of parts. Do not paint with the same clarity, everything onto your canvas. Remember that the goal is the quality of your expression, narrow your focus to one thing and visually minimize other areas to be subordinate to your focal point. So like, for example, in this painting, I have a hierarchy of there's a hierarchy of five items. There is the flower arrangement with the azaleas and bleeding heart, the stack of books, the blue Willow plate in the front, the ginger jar, and then this box back there. However, like, when it comes down to it, the focal point is the flowers. There's no doubt about that. There is some tension here between the two, and that's only to make sure that the composition that the eye doesn't just stick in one place either, because the eye does need to move through your composition in order to create that variety, that sense of interest into the composition. But at the same time, you know, you want to emphasize the focal point. And, as an example, when I was painting this painting, even though the stack of books was really cool, I purposely actually suppressed the colored contrast between the bindings of each one of those books and darken them to suppress and visually push them back. And the same goes for this object back here and the ginger jar. And I could have made the plate a more dynamic piece. But again, too, I also softened that as well and made to emphasize the importance of the flower bouquet. Okay, with your center of interest, Okay, these are a whole bunch of rules with them. And so I just want to go over them with you. Determine the center your center of interest. And this is because a painting is a clearly organized view with a specific hierarchy of parts. So one thing. Your focal point needs to be a specific thing. It should be lighter. Okay. Now, this is where these are all these are rules of thumb that you can eventually break if you want to. It should be lighter than its surroundings. It usually belongs in the painting's upper right hand side. This is because we read left to right. And so, like, for example, you would put it up there. That's again, that is something that you can break as long as you have a strong composition. But if you don't have a strong composition or you're new to composition, this is a wonderful rule of thumb to keep in mind to help set up your composition. The lit side of your center of interest should be on the side closest to the light source of the painting. The total area of the center of interest is between an eighth to a fourth of the total surface area of your picture plane, your format. It should be supported by a holding dark. So, for example, that is an example of a holding dark. That dark supports the focal interest of that cylinder. But as I said, all rules can be broken. They are just guidelines. Guidelines are wonderful because if you're in a situation where you could do an either or, you choose the thing that will make for a stronger painting. So for example, you avoid separating the lightest light from the darkest dark by keeping your lightest light and your darkest dark close together. You do not want to separate your hottest hot and your coolest cool. Instead, you also want to bring those guys together to create that wonderful visual vibration and the tension that you get from visual vibration. Avoid making your focal point darker than the background and avoid having more negative space above the focal point. That's a good rule of thumb, I can always be broken. Consider making your focal point lighter than its surrounding background and have more negative space at the bottom. And again, that's if you have the choice, and you include that to potentially make your composition stronger. Placing the lit side of the focal point on the side of the picture away from the light source. So the light source is over here and by pulling further away. That's something to avoid unless you're trying to create a emotional distance. Having the lit side of the focal point on the side of the closest to the light source and also including, you know, a holding dark to keep it. And that just reinforces that center of interest. 5. Creating Movement and Finding Balance in Your Painting: The third component that I want to dig into is the idea of balance and movement. The best compositions have both the visual filling of movement, also called rhythm. And also a feeling of balance, though not an equal part. So you'll never have a painting that is equally balanced and equally full of movement. You don't want to do that because you get too much unity and then it gets boring and it kind of can get static. The goal of a good composition design is to engage the viewer and convey the artistic idea. And you use balance and movement to convey the idea. In fact, balance and movement is the best thing for helping guide the eye of the viewer through your composition. That then, you know, really it enhances the visual engagement, which then enhances the mental engagement of your viewer. If you have too much movement in your piece, the eye of the viewer never has an opportunity to stop. And then therefore, your artwork has too much movement. And oftentimes if there's too much movement, even if you have a strong focal point, you can actually visually almost eliminate it because there's just too much movement and there isn't that opportunity for the viewer's eye to slow down. When the eye is not able to slow down and find that focal point, your artwork automatically does not engage. You know, I just is like I think of it as like dissonant sounds versus like a wonderful symphony. You know, you could bang a tympany drum and have a violin playing and a viola and a cello but if they haven't become harmonized to create a sense of rhythm in your piece, you're never going you know, you're just going you're going to push you're going to emotionally push away any viewer, and you're not going to get engagement. I like to think about this, so in this diagram right here on the left side is, like, superblanc. And on the right is most in like movement. And then like, so you create balance by symmetry, by creating something symmetry. And like I often like to think about dividing my picture plane by a central axis. And then you get more movement if you choose not to get a little bit of off simmer. Even if you have symmetry I E in that you have two equal shaped sized boxes, one box that is closer to the central axis line versus the other one, you get a nice you get things that are they start to become a little bit asymmetrical. You've got that sense of a little bit of off balance. And then if you create a total asymmetry, that's the most, that is the least balance. That is, like, the most unbalanced versus the balance. Another way is like the angles and lines and shapes that you have that are parallel to your picture format. Now you have the middle ground is having some lines that are parallel to your picture playing edges, and then some that are diagonals. And then the most movement you're going to have is when you have only diagonal lines. Your focal point helps engage the viewer into your piece. And you do that with you need both aspects of balance and movement in your painting, and they need to work together symbiotically in order to create that engagement. But what are some ways of creating balance? One is to repeat repeated equal size shapes. Another is to use grids or rectilinear lines that run parallel to the different edges of your format. And another one is by doing parallel zones. Think of those Think of wonderful landscapes. Ways to create movement is to have asymmetry in, you can do it by scale. You can do it by the asymmetric odd numbers are wonderful for creating movement. And then diagonals, odd numbers of diagonals, just does it even more. Circular shapes and movements will do that. And then this one is the idea of implied movement, and that like an implied shape, too, because, for example, we see almost a circular shape here, and it's done by the swish, but it's not connecting. It's not a completed shape. It's an inferred shape. You can create movement by the idea of an implied shape without having to truly express it as a full closed form and shape. Pictorial balance, there are three types of pictorial balance. You can have symmetrical balance, asymmetrical balance or off center where there's no balance. But before we get to the examples, I want to just talk about some of the rules about pictorial balance. The further away an object is from your central axis, the greater the visual weight that object will have. So for example, in this image right here, we have two squares that are the same value, same size, this one has more visual weight than the one on the left because it is further away from your central axis. And even if you're a former architect that loves like diagramming stuff like this. We humans inherently understand balance. We understand these rules. These rules are very inherent because that's, you know, even our ability to balance on to walk, you know, are influenced by these same kind of rules. And if you think about, like, the center of your body is your central access point. If all things being equal, a larger object is visually heavier than a smaller object. All things being equal, a dark valued object will be visually heavier than a light value object. An object that has visual depth will be visually heavier than a flatly depicted object. And so this is where when we paint three dimensionally, by adding that sense of rendered three dimensional form, we automatically will give that object those color shapes more visual strength than if we just did a flat plane or a flat shape. Then the more interesting the object is, the greater the visual weight, too. So like a gray scale of a portrait of a head will always be more visually interesting than just a dot, even if they are about the same scale and the same value. Okay, so we have three different types of pictorial balance. And for example, we have the doch portrait, and this is, like, totally asymmetrical portrait. We have the Monet painting, and this one is asymmetrical. And also, like, if all read the ify have the Edgar Payne book, this is also would be identified as a still yard compositional type. And then I thought I would throw in one of my paintings. So this is where you can break the rules because this painting has no focal point. It's a little bit off balance. It's got, you know, it's asymmetrical. It has a whole bunch of little pieces and big pieces. And it's one of my favorite paintings I painted last year. And I wanted to end with sharing this with you guys that like, you have all the rules. But you still have the opportunity to break them all and love painting you do, too. There. And so now let's dive into I have some examples for you guys. Okay. Okay, so let's look at examples of compositional balance. I love this piece. This piece is very static. It's very calm arrangement. It's pyramidal shape. The base is heavy. The organization of objects is organized and a very, you know, it's very controlled. It's very beautiful. You've got a wonderful sense of blues. And then pinks with just a couple, you know, these three right here of those peaches, have a little bit more orange. And so it's just a lovely very balanced painting. However, it has just enough movement and enough variety in it that doesn't make it boring. And so, like when you're working with the painting, you always want to be walking that fine line between balance and movement, balance and rhythm. Here's another example of a fantin latur. More is going on in this composition than the Young Bogart's one. But however, it is still it's still a balanced composition within the organization of its objects, and that the overall shape is, again, a triangular pyramidal composition. The triangles are the most stable structure in construction, like in building, but also in art. And the white tablecloth is balanced by the white flowers against that dark background. The large mass of melon is balanced by the grouping of the peaches, the dark vase is balanced by the craft of wine. You know, you've got a wonderful push and pull, while at the same time, enough variety that, you know, keeps this Henry Fenton Latour exceptionally interesting. And then, here we go. One of my favorite paintings by Jan Bogart. And this is, you know, this is this is like the epitome of a balanced symmetrical composition. The only movement is in the fact that the variety of the colors of the Zinas and how you have, some have big stems, and some you see little stems. But as a whole, a little bit of the leaves gives us some of our movement, and the petals give us our movement. But it's an exceptionally symmetrical, stable, serene calm Now let's look at compositional movement. Now, this painting of Nestertiums in a ginger jar by Peter Florences it's all about, you know, it's all about the diagonals. It's the diagonals of the Nestertium plant. It's off. You know, if our central axis is, like, right here, we've got a heavy dark value object against a large negative shape of the background, you know, that creates that asymmetricalness of balance. You know, it's asymmetrically balanced. We have this horizontal, but the horizontal is so mused and must that yes, it's horizontal, but it's not a firm, strong horizontal. So and because of that variety of that edge, it has movement, and it's not visually dominant as, say, the oranges and those diagonals of the Nestertimfns. Okay. This is a landscape, but it also is a really good example of how you can create movement between plane off foreground against background. Here we have a very busy and bright foreground of all the wild poppies, but then you have in the background, you have these horizontal planes that help balance that. And then you've got the diagonals, right there, and then in the foreground, the diagonals, and then even the diagonal of the fallen part of the poppies as they come up. But what makes this painting not too foreground heavy is the fact that we have these like the sailboat back here that visually allows our eyes to bounce back and then come back in, bounce back, come back in. And this is another example of probably the steel yard type of composition as well. Okay. Now, this one has lots of movement. When looking at this painting, I'm struck by the tension of movement versus balance in this piece. There's a sense of stability with the horizontal head right here, countered by the sweeping lines of the tulip fields, and, like, there's a sense of there's just such a nice, wonderful sense of movement through here. But what keeps the eye still within the picture plane are two things. One is the hedge stops short right there. And then I actually think that this painting would be a much weaker painting without this wispy tree here. So I often like to look when I'm looking at a composition, I'll put my thumb over that object and kind of try to visually block out. And see how important an aspect of a painting an element of a composition is. And if I feel that, like, Oh, because it's this tree that stops us from truly going off here. And I actually think that even though we have this wonderful diagonal here, it's this tree that keeps us from shooting off to the right because we get in here and it invites us back in to look, check out the top of these of this reddish roof corner, the flowers here. This little tiny chimney is visually important because we've got a mid tone, a dark, another mid tone, but this is a cool, cool warmer. And even that will play with influencing us. Now, this wonderful still life by William Nicholson is it's all about the diagonals and the implied diagonals and the cut through. It is an interesting little painting. And, it's also an interesting painting because it's one of the few early still life that was done in artificial light, guys. Like, nowadays, don't we see a ton of paintings done with artificial light as the light source. But when this painting was done, it was like, revolutionary, too, because he painted it with a freaking light bulb that was, like, probably because you can see the short shadows and everything and, like, you know, and the fact that there's hardly any shadow for the onion and the fruit that's in that bowl, that that light bulb was hanging over the table. It really kind of shortens the sense of visual depth in this painting. If it wasn't for this, there's no, that's that's my auto cat or my photoshop line. But in the original eye painting, there are some marks that are that mark right there, this and there is important to keep our eyes from not driving off too quickly. And this diagonal right here reinforces the curve linear shape of the bull. 6. Final Thoughts & Homework: The composition of a painting is the expression of an artistic idea. You work with the components of a painting and organize them to support and reinforce your idea. I personally think that, like, when you want to start upleveling your compositions, you need to start thinking about your format. Like, how is that going to influence the emotionality of your painting? The focal point and making sure that, like, your focal point supports the idea of painting. And if, for example, you choose not to have a focal point in your painting, that the idea that supports that painting supports the fact that it doesn't have a focal point. And then making sure that the sense of balance and movement within your painting support and help the viewer engage with that composition versus making it boring and dull. With composition, this is a subject that the more you dig into and actually do the diagram, the compositional designs and diagrams and thumbnails, and you kind of investigate and then apply physically to your work. The more likely you are going to absorb these lessons. And with composition, you can plan all you want, but when you're setting up a still life setup, it has to be kind of intuitive. You can't be Harmony Grainger from the Harry Potter series and all about learning from the textbook. It has to be a little bit more you have to go out and do it. And by having some of the rules of them kind of, like, deeply in your psyche will help you create very intuitive compositions that are a wonderful expression of you. With that, I made a homework for you. I want you to select two or three paintings that you admire of any subject and diagram those compositions. And what do I mean by diagram? I mean, do the same thing that I did here. You know what I mean? Like, just, you know, you can just draw, you know, and then, like, this is, you know, these are here's a diagram of some compositions that I'm investigating. So, you know, just diagram them out. And then choose one of those compositions that you diagram that you really like and then develop your own painting based on that composition. By this, I'm not suggesting you copy that composition verbatim. We're not making a master copy, we are interpreting. But I want you to analyze what you liked about it. Find your focal point, find your balance and movement, and develop that painting. And then share your diagrams in any work you want to inside the community. And I thought this was funny. I was reading Sir Joshua Reynolds discourse, his books called the Discourses, which which are really cool. They are his notes of his lectures that he used to give every year. He also agrees with it. And so that's why I got a quote from him. The more extensive therefore, your acquaintance is with the works of those who have excelled. The more extensive will be your powers of invention. And what may appear still more like a paradox, the more original will be your conceptions.