Easy Tips For Planning Your Art Work

We’ve seen those funny cartoons showing an artist with his or her thumb in the air, or making frames around things with their hands. What’s that all about? They’re using two simple and immediate ways to check their compositions! Use your hands to check the composition of this still life.



You can use your thumb to add or subtract something. Place it over the small dark bottle then look at the picture as a whole. You’ll see how the whole thrust of the picture shifts to the other side. Now “put the bottle back” by removing your thumb and you’ll see how the picture rights itself.

Now make a “frame” of your hands and play with changing the size of the canvas. Notice that if you eliminate some of the table, the bottles appear uncomfortably crowded.

One more easy way to check your composition is to rotate the work in all four directions. Sometimes you’ll be surprised to see that a “hole” or blank spot appears in one position—a blank spot you didn’t notice when you had it “right-side up.” That blank spot is a clue that you need to spend a little more time composing that area. How? Make a nearby shape larger. Add another related shape there. Take something else away on the opposite side. The possibilities are endless, but many must be tried, because that blank spot is telling you something important.