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| Farm Cottages - Latest Thumbnail - 7cm x 10cm (2.75" x 4") Compositional Principles - Drawing and Painting the Landscape Ink and Watercolour on Paper Stillman & Birn Alpha Series Sketchbook |
The bulk of Lesson 33 of Drawing and Painting the Landscape by Philip Tyler is a review of John Ruskin’s 9 laws of composition from The Elements of Drawing:
- Principality
- Repetition
- Continuity
- Curvature
- Radiation
- Contrast
- Interchange
- Consistency
- Harmony
Phillip sneaks in a couple of extras. Stillness might be accepted unchallenged, but Photo Manipulation isn’t getting on to a list published in 1857.
The exercise for the lesson involves taking as many different photos of a subject as possible and then making a series of compositional studies.
I selected some local cottages and took a load of photos. My initial experiments concerned the placement of the major horizontal divisions. I tried a few different arrangements before settling on the first one; which is often the way. The next step was a small thumbnail to explore where the buildings fitted into this schema and some initial ideas about tone.
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| Farm Cottages - Initial Thumbnails - Each 3.5cm x 5cm (1.5" x 2") Compositional Principles - Drawing and Painting the Landscape Ink on Paper Stillman & Birn Alpha Series Sketchbook |
Then I moved on to slightly bigger thumbnails to investigate the drawing, tones and colours.
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| Farm Cottages - Thumbnails - Each 7cm x 10cm (2.75" x 4") Compositional Principles - Drawing and Painting the Landscape Ink, Watercolour and Graphite on Paper Stillman & Birn Alpha Series Sketchbook |
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| Farm Cottages - Off-centre Thumbnails - Each 3.5cm x 5cm (1.5" x 2") Compositional Principles - Drawing and Painting the Landscape Ink on Paper Stillman & Birn Alpha Series Sketchbook |
The drawing at the top of the post investigates colour and tone for the repositioned buildings. I also plan to create some texture in the foreground and add some small flashes of bold colour in the focal point amongst the buildings.
