Martian Detention Headquarter

#1

I’m confuse about the composition I’ve done on this painting… Any suggestion will help…

#2

You have a bit of problem with spacing. Right now, the amount of distance between all of your big/main shapes are roughly the same, thus the image doesn’t flow organically in the way it balances all the shapes. Usually, you want to create a good sense of contrast and balance, such as large vs. small, near vs. far, short vs. long, curve vs. lines/angles, dark vs. light, warm vs. cool, etc. And in terms of spacing, you want to offset your main shapes so they don’t have similar distances from each other, as if someone purposely placed them all equal distances apart in a contrived manner.

You can try expanding the canvas so it’s bigger, and then move the ships around so there’s better use of the negative space (the sky), while the spacing between the ships and the landscape/architecture aren’t so similar, while keep the important shapes in the most effective focal area (golden ratio).

#3

Hi guys, this is the stage 2 of the painting, I did some rotation and putting on details, paint some clouds, added more colors and space ships…

#4

I would suggest you expand the canvas at the top and left, and give this scene more room to breathe, instead of having all your main shapes so close to the borders of the image. You probably have to move some stuff around too after expanding the canvas, so that your main focal points sit nicely near/at the golden ratio or rule-of-thirds focal points.

#5

Thank you Mr Lunatique for the suggestion, I will try to do it tommorow… it will be wider and look like a screen of a film,… that’s nice… but, should I resize again the space crafts, or I leave the size like that… should I need to create more objects to the left?

#6

I’m going to post a few passages from the second week’s lecture notes of my workshop (linked below in my signature), which I think will help you here:

It’s very important to remember to fight the urge to fill up the whole canvas just because you think it’ll look fuller. That’s a terrible way to approach composition. In a successful composition, the most important thing is establishing the focal points, and thinking about how you could use all supporting elements to help emphasize the main focal point(s). It’s totally OK to leave large spaces of blank negative space in your composition, and in fact that is often a very good thing to have in a composition, depending on the scene portrayed.

and

[B]From all these examples you can see that there are many factors involved in how an image is framed and balanced, and usually those factors are size, shape, value, color, position, and angle, and they all have to work together to convey the intent of the image. Sometimes edge quality (blurry or sharp) and surface quality (textured or smooth) might come into play as well, but they tend to be secondary, or even tertiary concerns. How much “weight” a part of the image carries is made up of the combination of that list of factors. For example, an image featuring a large white wolf shot against white snow vs. a small black dog shot against the same background; while the white wolf is larger than the black dog due to its size, the small black dog’s value carries more weight when shot against a white background, and the two end up being more or less equal. But if one of them is sticking its red tongue out, then the red of the tongue all of a sudden tips the balance again, as red in a white background can be quite striking.

When dealing with multiple areas of focus, you can create a hierarchy of visual weight to delineate which are the more important focuses. For example, you can light the main focus a bit brighter or with a bit more contrast, and push the less important focuses back with dimmer lighting. The same approach could be done with color, using vibrant colors for main focuses and more muted colors for minor focuses. The size and the complexity of shapes could be utilized as well, and so on.[/B]

and

[B]The idea of contrast is one of the central ideas in composition, and there are many aspects to it:

Big shapes vs. small shapes

Soft curves vs. straight lines and hard angles

Bright values vs. dark values

Soft edges vs. hard edges

Simple vs. complex

Dramatic vs. subtle

Smooth vs. textured

Repetition vs. variety

Saturated colors vs. muted colors

Cool color temperature vs. warm color temperature
[/B]

#7

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