09-08-2016, 11:13 AM
Weeeell, I'm not sure I'm in any position to give you advice, and since the learning process for most artists seems to be making lots of small discoveries about a subjectmatter that pile up over time, even if one of us knows things the other does not, perhaps it's not something that can be communicated easily.
I figured it might be easier to talk about specific paintings than shapelanguage and composition in general, so I did a paintover, but I honestly can't tell if it's any good (In fact, that's been happening a lot lately... not sure why). You tell me.
If it is, I'll try to explain why, and if it isn't... well, at least I'll know I need to work on my critical eye.
Edit: alright, change of plans, I'll give you my reasoning behind the decisions I made, and you tell me if it makes sense.
I tried to change some tangents to make the different objects in the painting read more clearly (like putting a tree in front of the church to make the dudes head work and changing the shape of the tree to the right to make the bird read), changed some values to get a clearer seperation between fore- and middleground and used color contrast to make the robot more prominent, with a red cape against stronger complimentary greens for trees and hedges. I think this also made the body shape read more clearly, cause it was getting swallowed up by the cape before. I also changed the framing to give the characters some more room, placed the statue a bit farther back so it isn't on the same level as the characters, and removed the woman standing right behind the robot, since it felt like she was making the composition to busy. Lastly, the stakes to the right seemed to be going into a different vanishingpoint than the path, the hedge and the church, which felt off, so I attempted to change that as well.
I figured it might be easier to talk about specific paintings than shapelanguage and composition in general, so I did a paintover, but I honestly can't tell if it's any good (In fact, that's been happening a lot lately... not sure why). You tell me.
If it is, I'll try to explain why, and if it isn't... well, at least I'll know I need to work on my critical eye.
Edit: alright, change of plans, I'll give you my reasoning behind the decisions I made, and you tell me if it makes sense.
I tried to change some tangents to make the different objects in the painting read more clearly (like putting a tree in front of the church to make the dudes head work and changing the shape of the tree to the right to make the bird read), changed some values to get a clearer seperation between fore- and middleground and used color contrast to make the robot more prominent, with a red cape against stronger complimentary greens for trees and hedges. I think this also made the body shape read more clearly, cause it was getting swallowed up by the cape before. I also changed the framing to give the characters some more room, placed the statue a bit farther back so it isn't on the same level as the characters, and removed the woman standing right behind the robot, since it felt like she was making the composition to busy. Lastly, the stakes to the right seemed to be going into a different vanishingpoint than the path, the hedge and the church, which felt off, so I attempted to change that as well.