How to create a great COMPOSITION Enhancing your painting Student Critique

How's it going? Andrew here with another video and in this video we're going to talk about a commonly overlooked aspect of painting and that's composition. Now I'm starting to get a few emails from people wanting to share examples of their work with me and it's great to see all this creativity coming in from around the world. I'm noticing though a lot of people finding photographs from either books or the internet and copying those photos directly not realizing their full potential as an artist and actually taking the opportunity to change the image for the better. Now one of the things that I discovered when I first started out was just how much work it took to produce a painting. I was under the impression that paintings just happened, especially those paintings of the old masters, my heroes, the people I held in really high regard. What I didn't realize was how much work they put into each and every painting to ensure success. So I'm going to take one of these examples of an image that was emailed to me and we're going to break it down and see if we can improve upon the composition and to do that I'm going to import the image into Photoshop over there and we're going to manipulate it and see if we can create something a little more dynamic. Now Tom who also lives in New Zealand has emailed me this picture of his painting of a forest. He used a published photograph as his reference material. Now it's a very nice painting but I think it followed a little bit too closely to the original source material. So we're going to change it up a bit and as artists we can do just that. We aren't bound to the image we're presented with. So I propose we make some changes. First of all let's poke some holes in the trees in the background and create a little bit more depth and space within this scene. Following that I think we could add another tree over here on the right hand side to avoid this effect of those two main trees framing the composition. This rock in the foreground needs to be moved back a little bit because it's a stumbling block for our viewer. In turn by changing the shape of the water here I'm going to lift that shoreline and open up this foreground area. Finally some directional light poking through those trees would really add a nice touch and create a little bit more of a dynamic atmosphere. And of course with this effect on that open pool in the foreground this is going to create much more interest. So I'm going to draw directly over the top of this image digitally using Photoshop. I'm going to start in the background poking some holes in that forest behind. Now I imagine these are going to be some deeply shaded trees at a distance so they're going to take on a bit of a blue tinge. And I just make a series of random marks selecting a few different colors here and there. By adding some darker tone this is going to start to provide a bit more context for all of that highlight green. To avoid this look of goal posts framing our composition I'm going to move this tree over to the left a little bit and create a bit more of a stronger element within the composition. And also obscure the tree that is almost exiting the frame over on the right as well. Now in case you didn't already know artists have superhuman strength so I'm going to move this massive boulder here push it back into the composition and free up the foreground area. I'm also going to keep some of these waterfall aspects I really like those. These can trickle down into the pool that's in front. Never place an obstacle for your viewer to trip on right in the foreground. You want to invite them into the painting. I believe by making this change it'll do just that. Now I'm going to paint right over all of the rocks here in the foreground and also lift up that shoreline as we discussed earlier. Opening up this pool here in the front area. Now already I feel as a viewer of this painting that I'm being invited into the scene. With a little bit of directional light here I need a corresponding darker tone to get a bit more of that dynamic effect of light versus dark. As I begin to darken the rest of the painting and the foreground as well it makes these little highlights jump out off the surface. But in addition to this I need to bring in a bit more darker tone right here in the foreground and pull that foreground in towards the viewer creating a contrast between the foreground and that distant background. Overall I'm pretty happy with where this painting has gone to and I believe that these are adequate notes to be able to carry on with the painting in the studio and apply these changes making it a little more dynamic. It's quite a drastic change from the initial painting that we started out with but I believe by making changes like this using a digital medium we can know that road ahead and be a little bit more bold and daring with our paintings. Now using a digital medium such as Photoshop provides the artist with a unique opportunity to revisit their idea and try to make it better. I use it all the time to just push my paintings to the next level. Now although my Photoshop skills are pretty basic what I did learn I learned directly from Skillshare. Now Skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of classes in art, design or even technology. I use it all the time when it comes to things like Photoshop or even helping me produce videos that I provide for you guys. Premium membership gives you unlimited access to high quality classes from experts working in their fields so you can improve upon your skills, unlock new opportunities and do the work you love. Now I realized my skills were lacking in Photoshop so I jumped onto Skillshare and took a little course to sharpen my skills in this area and I'm so glad that I did because now I have the opportunity to take my paintings to a new level. Now Skillshare is actually more affordable than most learning platforms out there with annual subscriptions costing less than $10 a month. Now since Skillshare is sponsoring this video the first 500 people to click the link in the description down below will get their first two months free. Now we've just talked about using Photoshop to identify some problems and some solutions with a painting to push that painting to a new level. Now let me talk to you about how I compose one of my paintings from the very start of the process. I've had this idea to do a big painting of Mount Talbot for a long time now. I've been very fortunate to see Mount Talbot in all sorts of different conditions. I was having trouble identifying exactly how I wanted to paint the mountain and the surrounding valley. As I was going through my reference material I started zoning in on the idea, the core idea of what I was wanting to express. Now it wasn't just a matter of finding the right photograph, I needed to start in the sketchbook. Now all of my ideas for my big studio paintings begin here in the sketchbook. I've got my photographic reference on my iPad next to me and this is my place right here to think about everything I want to put into that painting. In addition to my photographs I'm also using some en plein air studies that I made out in the field. Now these drawings don't need to be detailed, in fact this is a very small drawing as you can see. I'm just getting down the rough ideas and trying to communicate a little bit of the atmosphere and the tones as well as my compositional arrangement. Here it's no big deal if I make a mistake. I haven't invested a lot of time in these drawings at all. I keep the idea firm in my head as well to make changes that will suit the painting, not necessarily adhering to that photograph. There's a point where you have to ask yourself what does the painting need, what is needed in this composition to push the image to the next level. And just like that two and a half minutes in and this first little study is done. Now that I have an idea of the composition I'm going to see what changes I can make to this to improve upon the situation. I'm going to draw it several more times. Working in an A4 sketchbook I can generally fit in about four of these thumbnail drawings and a slightly larger one. Each time I do the drawing I change something. I make my tones maybe a little bit darker, a little bit lighter. I shift mountains. I even change the direction of rivers. All to find the best composition I can come up with. Now I'm really excited about this painting but I know I have to do my homework. Every time I forget about this process I get bitten and I end up engaged in abortive work where I have to go back and almost start all over again to fix the image because something has come up. So these little drawings here in the sketchbook are a small price to pay for coming up with something that I'm a bit happier with. Now these drawings aren't going to win any awards or wow anybody. This is just my space to think. I'm trying not to be too precious about it. If I spend more than five minutes on any one of these little squares it's just too long. Now already I'm sure you can see the composition changing slightly. We're three drawings in. Time to do the fourth one. What I'm thinking here is I might need a little bit more darker tone in this mountain in the background and also changing that angle of the river in the foreground. I'm going to adjust the trees either side of the valley and I'm even thinking about where the direction of the light is coming from. I know I want some of this mist that's accumulated down in the bottom of the valley. That's going to make a really cool effect by the time I come to paint the bigger version. So I've done four little drawings. Now I'm going to repeat the fourth drawing and make it slightly bigger and make a few slight changes to it as well. Now because the little drawings took around two and a half to five minutes that might be a stretch for something bigger like this. So I'm going to spend about 20 minutes on this drawing and add just a bit more refinement. I need to get more information into this little panel here that will translate into a bigger drawing. I just love this bit of photographic reference and that mist that is accumulated in the bottom of the valley. This is going to add a really cool effect with that final painting. So I'm going to erase some of this area here to create a bit more of that mist effect and I'm not trying or going over the top to really create fully rendered forms. I'm still keeping this drawing here pretty sketchy. I've got some of my favorite pencils handy for this process. I begin building up the image with an H, a very hard lead, and this will help me create some fine lines. From there I create darker tones with a B and then finally I'll move on to a 2B, rarely more than a 4B. Now the higher in the Bs you go the darker those lines are going to get and I follow pretty much the same rules that I follow with my painting. Everything in the background is generally lighter and the contrast between the dark tones and the light tones is less than that of the foreground. In the foreground I'm going to have much heavier tone and this will allow me to create just a bit of an indication of depth within the drawing. So as long as I get those relationships more or less dark to light in the foreground and then fading out into a mid-tone in the background, this will translate well whether I go on to do a more detailed drawing or a color study from here. I really like the way this little stream snakes its way into that background. I did away with the big river because I felt this element was just too heavy for the composition and might take some attention away from those distant mountains. All in all I feel this composition is pretty balanced. I can't see any major issues cropping up with this one as I translate it onto a bigger piece of paper and here I'm going to do a I measure carefully the edge of the drawing here so that it translates in terms of proportion to the canvas. So the height to width ratio here is exactly identical to the big canvas I have waiting for this composition. Now you might struggle to see my construction lines here but I know exactly where the elements have to go and I mark in some of these with an H pencil pressing only very lightly. Once I'm happy with where these lines are then I can begin shading in some of my tones. I'm going to keep using the H pencil here because it's a nice hard lead and it's not going to get out of control in these background areas like the shadows and some of the clouds. I begin keeping everything very light, very free here in the background and then I start to add in darker and darker tones. I carry on with this hatching motion over almost the entirety of the scene just building up a little bit of background tone. I can cover a lot of area pretty quickly with this technique. Once I'm happy with this amount of tone I go back over the top with a mechanical pencil and sharpen some of the forms. This is my map for that final composition. I'll refer to not only my reference material in my photographs but I'm going to also use this drawing. In fact this drawing is what I'm going to transfer directly to that canvas. So I'm going to pay a little bit closer attention to all of those intricate details those cracks, folds, and crevices in the side of the mountain even to where some of those snow patches lie. As I'm doing this compositional sketch I feel I'm becoming more familiar with the landscape. I'm almost memorizing it with the end of that pencil so when it comes time to paint the final version I feel like I've already been here and this really helps me when I'm painting. I don't feel like I get lost or stuck but rather I get caught up in the moment of painting and the paint just falls off the brush in the right location because I have a plan. I have a map for moving ahead. Now that background tone was really helping me flesh out some of these darker areas but now I need to drop the tone significantly as the image starts to come forward and create a bit of separation between these mid-ground trees and those distant mountains. Also working with whatever is furthest away first and then bringing the image towards the viewer allows me to keep my hand out of my pencil marks so at no time am I smudging the image. Now I've got a lot of reference material from many different angles here that I'm going to be referring to to help me with some of these details in the foreground and this really does help if ever you go off script if you're veering from your initial source image and you need a bit more information. I'll use typically for any one of my large studio paintings up to about 100 to 150 photographs to just give me enough information to flesh out all of those details. So obviously I use photographs but I'm not relying on one single image to be the anchor for the painting. Now I am super excited to paint all of these intricate little details in the foreground. These scattered rocks and weeds growing between them as well as a reflection in the water. It's going to be a lot of fun. Now by the time I finished this entire process I might have spent half the day sitting at this drawing board but that is nothing compared to the amount of time I'd have to spend going back to fix a painting knowing that something has gone wrong. Now all in all it's a pretty sweet little drawing but I might need just a bit more before I get stuck into the big painting. Now that I've got a detailed pencil sketch I've got a pretty clear idea about where this painting's going but there's still not enough information. I want to push this idea a little bit further and make sure that I know that road ahead so I'm going to need a color study. Now working directly on pre-primed Belgian linen adhered to a panel I begin to sketch out my composition. Now here I'm not too concerned with the exact linear aspects of the composition but I'm more interested in the color. So this is what the color study is for. I won't be transferring the image of this directly to the painting the final big canvas I mean. What I'm going to use is all my individual mixes of color. I need to know exactly what my tones are doing what's happening with the light and the atmosphere and what is that movement of the sky going to look like. All of this is going to inform the big final painting. This is a place as well where I take the accumulation of all the good ideas that I found in all of my photographic reference. I didn't find all of these atmospheric effects or the lighting effects in any one picture so I'm using an amalgamation of all of those references that are available to me. Now working on this painting I begin in my usual fashion of starting with whatever's furthest away working towards the foreground and building up the complexity of the image as I go. And once I've blocked in the image I can start to layer on some of the finer details and really inform that final process. Now the hero of this arrangement is Mount Talbot there in the distance. Now I imagine that the clouds are parting here and you can just see Mount Talbot revealed in the painting way out in the distance. Now because this is going to end up being such a big project I want to get it right so I'm going to spend a bit more time than usual on this color study. Typically a color study will take me one afternoon maybe about two or three hours but this one is going to take me about two to three days to finish off. I really want to make sure I get that final painting right. I like a good contrast of elements within a composition. That difference between a sharpness and a softness like here with the foreground grasses and that sharp nature of those blades of grass. This is going to contrast really nicely with that soft mist all the way in the distance. Now I'm very happy with the level of detail in this little painting. It's certainly going to help me much more when it comes to paint the final painting. Now as I was working on my color study I realized that there were a few mistakes that were beginning to crop up. I couldn't see it in the pencil stage but now that I had it in color in a small version in front of me it became glaringly obvious. So I had an idea for how to fix this but before I make the change on the painting or even in the final big version I'm going to go back to Photoshop manipulate the color study a little bit more and really push that image. So I'm going to take a dose of my own medicine here and go back into Photoshop with my color study and see if I can fix some of these issues that have cropped up. Now here's my major focal point. It's Mount Talbot in the distance right above another focal point which is that little river snaking into the background. I feel this weights the composition a little bit too heavily along this vertical axis on the left hand side. We need to create something that's going to engage a bit more space because when I look at it I've got this vector here that points into the background and I also have this vector from the slope above those mountains that points down towards Mount Talbot and in turn what this does is creates a big dead zone here in the painting. Now maybe I'm being too harsh but this is just niggling at me and I have to fix it before moving on to the final painting. So what I decided to do was take the foreground river and flip this around horizontally. So now instead of coming into the left it's now swinging around into the right and this has created a nice shift between the bottom right and the top left. Something about it just feels a little more balanced and I love this line swinging right up into my intended focal point Mount Talbot in the distance. Now I feel ready to tackle that bigger painting. I believe in doing paintings with hindsight because I know the road ahead and I know where those pitfalls are it makes me so much more prepared when I'm doing my larger studio works. And what a difference a few simple tricks can make. Now I am so much happier with this final image and I feel prepared now having done my homework that I can transfer that to the big painting to the big canvas and be happy with the final result. Now is it perfect? Absolutely not. There's always room for improvement but it's about being satisfied enough to be able to leap into that knowing that I'm not going to be engaged in abortive work. So hopefully you have a little bit more idea now about my process and how I go about composing a painting starting in the sketchbook with thumbnail sketches related to my photographic reference even referring to those en plein air studies I made out in the field. I then move from that sketchbook onto a bigger piece drawing paper and create a detailed drawing and then following that I create a color study. This is what I do for most of my big significant studio pieces. Now I really hope that you've enjoyed this video and found it informative and a big thank you to our sponsor Skillshare. Now remember if you want to sharpen your skills maybe try something different like photoshop or even something in another area there are thousands of courses available on Skillshare. Simply click that link in the description down below and the first 500 people to click that link are going to get their first two months free. Now as always if you like this video then hit that like button for me and if you want to come back for more see more painting videos just like this one make sure you subscribe to this channel. As always you can find me on Instagram and Facebook but also most important make sure you subscribe through my website at andrewtichler.com. Thanks so much for watching and I'll see you again soon.