Composition, Out to Sea Studio Painting by JoAnn Sanborn

Beach Music

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Out to Sea is the latest in a series of palms on the beach right here on Marco Island. You can see the others in this series on my daily painting blog here. I've enjoyed exploring the shape and color of these and other palms under a variety of light and circumstances. There's probably a few more paintings on this theme in my future!

Today's art lesson is about of composition. Composition means how the various parts of the painting will fit together and is one of the hardest things to teach. Here are some tips for composing the landscape in a way that will be pleasing. Remember that art rules are really good for learning, but in the right circumstances can be broken!

Ten rules for good composition:

1. Choose the orientation of the canvas according to the subject
Vertical - More dynamic
Good for tall subjects, compressed, elongated images
Horizontal - More pastoral
Subject can spread out

2. Keep the horizon line above or below centerline for more interest

3. Look for interesting underlying shapes in your block-out and exploit them.

4. Use a variety of scale.

5. Remember that negative shapes are as important as positive shapes.

6. Leave a way into the picture - don’t put up a wall

7. Repeat Shapes for unity

8. Create a path for the viewer’s eye

9. Watch for and avoid conflicting lines

10. Above all, avoid monotony

Process - Painting from Photographs

Whether still life, portraiture or landscape, an artist needs to view a live version their subject in order to know it fully. A landscape painter must spent time outside to have the secrets of the land revealed. The landscape has many personalities, changes very quickly and reveals its secrets slowly. It takes patience and perception to see what she has to offer.

In the past I've spent many hours in the Everglades and in areas around Marco Island painting. I like responding directly to the landscape. My usually practice is to "block out" the painting outside, but take it back to the studio for further interpretation. Sometimes, however, it's necessary to work from photographs. This is fine as long as you took the photograph yourself and understand a photographs limitations. It's not a good idea to use someone else's photograph for many reasons, but that's a subject for another day! Photographs flatten the scene, and reduce the value range, so you'll have to make up for this in the painting.

I'm going to use the above photograph to start a new studio painting. I want the painting to be about the palm tree, so I'm going to shorten and push back the surrounding pines. There's a nice dark in the front that I'll carry through to the back, and some palmetto bushes to set off the palm. The light sky makes a nice negative coming into the foliage. Let's get started!

First mix up a nice dark use it to block out everything but the lightest portions of the composition. I use a mix of the warm red and blue on my palette, like quinacridone crimson and ultramarine blue. If it's too purple I'll mix in a little brown or green to keep it neutral. Using a fairly dry brush I scrub the shape of the dark trees and bushes into the dark canvas. You can barely see the forms, but that's OK. After I'm satisfied with the dark pattern, I very roughly block out the light sky. This is only the first stage, and the painting will be completed by many layers of paint as the forms are built.

Now it's time for a value check. This painting will be mostly darkish midtones, with a smaller portion being light sky and the smallest portion being the darkest darks. I'll take a break if it's going well at this point.

Materials - Preparing Acrylic Supports

Materials – Supports

First decide if you will be using the acrylic paints as water colors, as oil paints, or a mixed media. Acrylic can be used on, and will stick to most anything that’s not oily. If you plan on using acrylics as a water media, paper, or the new watercolor canvas will be your best support and no preparation is needed. If you will be acrylics in a manner similar to oil paints, you can choose canvas or linen, either stretched or on board. Mixed Media could go either way, only making sure that the support will be strong enough to hold any materials and additives you intend to apply.

We’ll focus on using acrylics in a manner similar to oil paints. I most often use professionally stretched canvas since I scrub the paint into the canvas. The professionally stretched canvases are tighter than I can do at home. Linen’s wonderful, but find it stretches too much when I get scrubbing unless I’m using it adhered to a board background. Canvas on board is a favorite, too.

Prepared canvas and linen support are available from a wide range of art supply stores and on the Internet. There are also some terrific small manufacturers of prepared supports. Check out what’s available at http://www.paintonthis.com/ and http://www.dailypaintingpanels.blogspot.com/. These panels come in a variety of sizes and are well suited for small, daily work, while larger, braced canvases may be better for larger studio work.

Once you have decided on your support, you may need to prepare it. If it has at least two coats of acrylic gesso, you may not need to do anything else. However it if has only one coat, or you can see through the canvas when you hold it up to a window, you may want to add another coat or two of acrylic gesso before you begin. This will thoroughly seal the canvas and prepare the surface for the paint.

Start with prepared acrylic gesso, thinned with a little water. It should be about the consistence of a cream soup. The gesso mix should be thin enough to spread easily without dripping. You can apply the paint using a house painting brush. Let the canvas dry completely between coats, and put the second coat on going in the opposite direction. If you are doing very fine work you can sand between each coat, but this is a person preference. I usually order and prepare a number of canvases at a time so there’s always one prepared when I’m ready to paint.

Once the canvas is prepared, you can begin to paint. Some artists like to work on white canvas and others prefer to tone the canvas first. Some us the complementary color of the expected painting, which sets up an immediate vibration. Some like to start with a middle value, and work both to the lights and the darks. My final preparation is to paint the canvas a warm dark, usually purplish. It’s so non-threatening to work on a dark background, and I love to see the painting coming into the light.

Painting of Everglades "Warming in Sunshine"

Warming In Sunshine

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This is the start of a new blog for the larger paintings that I do in my studio on Marco Island, Warming in Sunshine is one of the completed paintings done this summer in preparation for my show at the Marco Center for the Arts Wine and Art as Featured Artist for August. The show will hang for the rest of the month, and then unsold paintings will come back to the studio and wait to be adopted into a new home.