I'm just starting...

[RalphDamiani]

I think a good place to start would be choosing a subject for your scene. That's the center of attention, the place you want your viewers to focus at, in first place. The rest of your scene will be complementary to it. In this case, what exactly do you want as the center of interest of your scene? The road? The mountain? The fields?

Let's assume for a moment it's the mountain. In that case, you might want to move it a bit so it doesn't sit right in the center of your scene. The center of interest doesn't need to be in the center of the image to draw attention to itself. You want your scene to look natural and at the same time you want your mountain to draw interest to itself without screaming "look at me! look at me!".

So how can you accomplish that? You can play with other elements of the environment that if are nicely located in the composition, will move the viewer's eyes to your place of choice (especially if you use complementary colours), you can play with lighting, bathing your subject with dramatic lights and shadows, you can use highlights to emphasize your subject.

In your case, you added a sun behind the mountain. As it happens, your mountain would be almost completely lost in gloomy shadows, either at dawn or dusk, which would give a purpleish or redish tint to your scene. Be always mindful of how nature works, observing is the first step for a good illustration. When in doubt, use reference pictures or take some pictures yourself.

So for an exercise, I would recommend deciding on subject, thinking how it can be placed in the scene naturally (imagine good photography), imagine what will complement it in the scene. Next select a light source, think how it will affect your shapes. And last, but not least, select few basic colours and start "blocking" your shapes, thinking how light affects them. Don't go crazy on the pallette, work with a few colours that are in harmony with each other. At this point, you should read up on some colour tutorials so gain knowledge on primary and secondary colours, how to combine them, how they complement each other, etc.

Here's a good one for you to start: http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm

And here's a good tutorial on composition rules: http://www.wetcanvas.com/Articles2/135/120/

Hope this helps. =)

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