Help! Drills for composition and design please?

[eyedrawthings]

I really need to get a better sense of design and composition in my art. Does anyone know any good drills and exercises to get my compositional creativity up to snuff? Even good warm ups that'll get my mind in the right frame?

Thanks!

[scmarooney]

I would recommend that you do the Speed Drawing Group every week, and participate in the Weekly Sketch group down in the Community projects area, eyedrawthings! Nothing helps working on your composition and drawing skills like practice, practice, practice. With the Speed Drawing Group you should limit yourself to 15 minutes and draw what you can from one of the provided photographs, it is good practice for composition.

[ajkarp]

Do some sketches following the shapes of letters. Using darks and light to try to emphasize and de-emphasize areas. Your basically wanting to control the movement of your viewers eyes over your drawing. Keep drawing and keep experimenting.

[eyedrawthings]

Thanks for the replies!

scmarooney - I've tried that but i don't get much better! I'm pretty good at speed drawing, and just being a human photocopier! But when it comes time for me to make something from scratch, no clear compositions pop in my head. I guess the drills im looking for are to help me get in that headspace where im thinking about composition as intuitively as i do with anatomy or lighting. Having said that, im totally getting back in to the drawing groups!

ajkarp - That's what im looking for! Gonna try that when i get home. Where'd you pick that one up?



Keep em coming people!

[Symson]

Look at paintings from the masters of the Renaissance and draw the basic shapes of the elements as squares, circles, triangles, etc. to see how they composed the scene and look for the directional elements they use to move the eye around.

If you really want to get serious then study the Golden ratio (also known as Golden Mean, Golden Mean Ratio and Divine Proportion).

[Repo Man]

As a warm-up, copy one panel a day from a favorite sequential artist. Pay attention to how the artist composed foreground, middleground, and background elements within the panel borders. Pick a mundane panel. Nothing fancy. Make actual notes on your sketch. How did the artist use thick and thin lines to denote depth? Spotted blacks and shadow? Positive and negative space?

I used to do this alot and I would pick up tricks that would later show through in my own art.

[pigeonmilk]

Going on memory here, I dont have my class notes but here are as many rules for effective design composition.

1. Contrasting colors, black/white
2. Changing the size of the object, making it biggere in relation to surrounding objects
3. Offcenter- meaning your picture isn’t centered
4. Use Angles, tilted images etc... Vertical lines indicated Authority, horizontal lines indicated passiveness, and Diagonal lines indicate Action
5. Changing the physical properties of an object...think Dhali, the melting clocks
6. Using Depth, ie, Chirascrio (spelling), foreshortening, Atmospheric perspective, 1, 2, 3 point perspective and overlapping, Thrumploe' ( spelling, google it) but its using Shadows in your images to create realism and depth...Lots of artists don.
7. Hierarchy, ie, making something larger or higher in the image in its relation to the existing subject matter, like having a King standing up over his subjects on a throne, or Jesus hanging on the cross is over the people around his feet.
8. Giving animal characterizes to people
9. Using humor, sex, pain, good, evil as part of your subject matter, you can use these individually
10. Indicating Line of Sight
I wish I could think of more, I know of 31 different good design rules to help create focal points and good comp