marie j.engelsvold

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How do you work with composition?

Hi, how are you doing??

Today I want to talk about how you can work with composition. Are you contious about composition when creating? I normally talk a lot about the process, how to  create from your heart. How to stay in deep contact to  your feelings, and how you can express it in your artwork. I write about the topic in many different ways, in hope you will get what I'am talking about. But sometimes you have to step back, and do some mindwork. To analyse what you are doing, and how you can progress, and raise above obstacles. When you are more confident in being in the flow of your heart, you can start trying to analyse your work, without going into being overly critical and judgemental about your drawings. 

Imagine you have done some drawings, but you are not quite satisfied. Take a look at the composition of your drawings.

  1. How do you arrange the elements on the paper? Do you always work in the center of the paper? Do you fill out all the white space?? Or do you only use the lower part of the paper?

  2. How about the size of the elements of your drawing? are they all the same size?? Are they all very small or very huge??

  3. What about the contrast between light and dark? Look at your drawing and find the darkest element and the lightest element. Are there a big contrast between the two values? Or are the tones or values of the colours nearly the same?

Their are a lot more things to look at, but theese 3 are the most important ones.

Marie J.Engelsvold. “Connection between different parts of myself” Acrylic tusch on paper. 42 x 29,7 cm. 2014

Marie J.Engelsvold. "Relationship with outlets for magic" Acrylic tusch on paper. 21 x 29,7 cm. 2014

Marie J.Engelsvold. “Try to transform ”Acrylic tusch on paper. 21 x 29,7 cm. 2014

Now take one of your drawings, and use the same elements but arrange them differently on the paper. Maybe using another size can help you.( I very often change to a bigger size of paper when I'am stuck.) Change the size of some of the elements to make more contrast. Also make one of the elements very dark, and another one very light. 

How did it work?? Sometimes we just get some habits and we do the same things all the time.

By thinking about theese things you just push your limits of what is possible. In the beginning you have to work contious with being aware of how you compose your drawing. But after doing it many times you will do it quite intuitively, and you have another tool in your toolbelt.

Maybe I have just opened the pandoras box for you? Because when you start to change how you look at your artwork, when you have new ideas on how to do it differently, a lot more ideas and possibilities will arise. So just keep going, it's so much fun:-))

Looking for more tips? look at this blogpost "Experiment with shapes and lines."

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