Watercolor Painting for Dummies (33 page)
Read Watercolor Painting for Dummies Online
Authors: Colette Pitcher
Tags: #Art, #Techniques, #Watercolor Painting, #General
In This Chapter
Becoming a picture director
Lighting into values
Considering shapes and sizes
Putting stuff in the right place
Improve your paintings by planning
I
used to think the most inhibiting word in art vocabulary was
composition.
After all, if anything was wrong in a painting it was always blamed on bad composition. But, composition was never well defined to me. It was just this ambiguous but all-encompassing source of blame. I don’t fear composition anymore and neither will you because, after reading this chapter, you’ll be more familiar with the concepts involved.
Composition
encompasses the entire picture and how it is set up. Composition includes the elements and principles of design (covered in Chapters 1, 5, and 6). Composition also takes into account the visual path the viewer’s eye takes when looking at the painting.
I liken composition to eating. You eat the same foods over and over. The meals you remember are the ones that combine interesting ingredients and present them exquisitely. In painting as in food, it doesn’t matter what’s on the menu, it matters how it’s prepared and arranged.
By looking at paintings, analyzing the way they are put together, and knowing the vocabulary to discuss paintings, you gain an understanding of composition. Understanding is the way to relieve anxiety and fear about any topic. And understanding composition helps you improve your paintings.
In this chapter, I merely offer guidelines to follow (remember there are no perfect paintings, alas, not even mine). Ten artists discussing most design and composition elements probably would come up with ten different opinions. Analyze the rules and goals yourself, and take with you what you prefer to put into your own paintings.
As a painter, you wear many hats, and one of them is the beret of a set designer.
Picture your painting as a set designer does a stage. You’re designing space within your painting on a flat sheet of paper. To get some depth and dimension, think of your painting like a stage and include the following:
A
foreground
close to the front or bottom of the page. The foreground gets the viewer interested and attracts him to look into the painting.
A
middle ground
appropriately in the middle. Often, most of your action takes place here.
A
background
farther into space, usually toward the top of the page. The background usually incorporates sky in any outdoor scene and fabric or wall in a still life.
Figure 7-1a shows a cross section of these three areas in a landscape, and Figure 7-1b shows the final painting.
When designing the areas of foreground, middle ground, and background, the three areas are best if made in three different sizes — small, medium, and large. (Chapter 1 has more on using size as an element in your painting.)
Figure 7-1:
Think like a stage designer when composing a painting.
Relax, I’m not delving into your morals. When talk turns to
values
in the artistic crowd, the conversation is about light and dark in your painting. (Chapter 5 has even more on values.)
One of the most important things to plan, especially in watercolor, is where to put lights and darks in your painting. Because transparent watercolor uses the white of the paper for the light areas, you need to plan to save the whites and light areas by planning where to put the darks. It’s easy to use color and forget value; however, the eye sees value first and color second. A value pattern of lights and darks keeps the viewer entertained and excited when looking at your painting.
Every time you paint, you’re composing a symphony. The lights and darks are the high and low notes. Most of the melody is somewhere in between, in the middle range. The lights and darks need to scatter throughout a painting. Too much of the same note is monotonous and boring. Variety saves a song and a painting from this fate. Always look for ways to create variety. (See Chapter 6 for tips on ways to work variety into your painting.)
