Here are some scans from Edgar Payne’s 1941 book, Composition of Outdoor Painting.
Although they might look dated now, these pages still have the power to jog your imagination when it is time to lay out your design elements on the page or the canvas.
Study them before you make your first marks, and remind yourself of how your composition is going to structure the final image, as well as how powerfully it will allow you to communicate to the viewer.
The more you concentrate on incorporating strong compositional ideas into your work, the more you will learn to look for and find the underlying layouts and structures of other people’s images.
This will lead you to a greater appreciation of the art that is around you.
Strong composition is the factor that makes a great picture “work”.
When you ask yourself “What makes this a good picture?”, good composition is at the heart of the answer.
Click on the pictures for a big image.
Tomorrow: Some examples of Edgar Payne’s work that show his ideas in practice.
Oh! And a big thankyou to my friend and colleague, Colin Stimpson, who originally alerted me to Edgar Payne’s little thumbnails.
One Comment
hi mike.
not sure if this is the best place to leave a comment but i dont know where else to.
Thanks for the help a few weeks back, VERY helpful. I hear you’re not coming back into college again, at least for a while.
I’ve posted just a couple of test shots of animation for the film on my blog incase you wanted a look at how we’re progressing, we’re not putting much on there so we dont ruin the film!
All is going well, not long to go now, been animating relentlessly for two weeks now, we have about 1min done… still a lot to go!
see you at the degree show we all hope,
Julian
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[...] This is a follow on from yesterday’s post “Composition Part 1.” [...]
[...] a year ago I posted some little thumbnail pictures by the American painter, Edgar Payne, that act as mini guidelines for composing [...]