TIPS ON COMPOSITION from TOM BROWN

 

This is a street corner on Balboa Island, in Newport Beach. There’s always something interesting to paint here, whether it’s the boats and harbor surrounding this little island, or the streets. It’s all good!

I thought it might be interesting show a photo of this actual site, and a couple steps while the work was in progress. It’s important at the beginning to keep in mind the two key viewing distances, and design the composition to take advantage of both.

For new artists who are unaware of it, the two critical viewing distances to consider are how it will look from across a room and how it will look when viewed up close. For those two viewing distances, I like a painting to have what I call “wall power” and “close-up charm.”

When seen from a distance I like a painting to have what I call “wall power,” which means that when someone sees your painting from across a gallery yours will be the one that that jumps out and grabs his eye.

“Close-up charm” is important when someone comes up close to examine the painting. That is when they can appreciate all the little magical strokes and detail, the textures you may have added, the subtle blending of colors or handling of edges that were not obvious from a distance.

With those two viewing distances in mind, I begin by making careful decisions about the color scheme and values. This is where I establish how I’ll link key elements together, and what I intend to feature. This is where I think about wall power.

For example in the progress steps you can see how I planned to link “warm” areas of the painting together. The buildings, bushes and palm trees all contain warmer colors, while a cool blue sky and bluish foreground frame that area. This helps unify the main areas of the composition.

I work quickly at this stage, to establish the main blocks of color and value. This can be done quite loosely, but it is very important. It creates a solid guide for all the finishing work to come.

Once that is handled I like to slow down as I begin adding detail. This is where the little subtleties are added that were not obvious from a distance. This is where you can create “close-up charm” in your painting. I like to take my time at this point and savor the process.

I work basically the same way in either oils or acrylics. This piece was done with acrylics on 6x6 heavyweight Bristol paper, available here.