12-27-2013, 05:46 AM
Well you nailed it there. Master studies! You can desaturate some master paintings you like particularly and do small quick value studies of them, where you are copying and thinking only about value arrangement and composition. Then spend a few minutes analysing what about the arrangement of values makes the image work, take small notes if you want. You can even then do your own value thumbnails trying to apply what you learned from imagination.
A favourite painter of mine is Winslow Homer, he has very strong composition and value control, also any of the hudson river group are good for romantic landscapes.
Besides that when starting your own paintings, don't just launch in there and hope for the best, a little bit of planning up front, sketches, light linework, underpainting whatever, can really help you.
Of course the internet is there. A quick search for composition resources should bring up stuff to look at. I'll see if I can find any useful ones I may have in my resource links. Mostly what I use is the rule of thirds because it is so simple and versatile,but it depends on what the painting is.
Stapleton kearns has several articles that analyse master paintings and talk about composition for landscapes.
I think those books are going to be incredibly useful, but yeah hard to find in libraries sometimes and quite expensive!
Just remembered another great book about painting in general and that is Alla Prima by Richard Schmidt. Absolutely fantastic book on his knowledge and process. And of course can't go wrong with Gurney's Color and Light for light theory and a bit of colour theory too.
A favourite painter of mine is Winslow Homer, he has very strong composition and value control, also any of the hudson river group are good for romantic landscapes.
Besides that when starting your own paintings, don't just launch in there and hope for the best, a little bit of planning up front, sketches, light linework, underpainting whatever, can really help you.
Of course the internet is there. A quick search for composition resources should bring up stuff to look at. I'll see if I can find any useful ones I may have in my resource links. Mostly what I use is the rule of thirds because it is so simple and versatile,but it depends on what the painting is.
Stapleton kearns has several articles that analyse master paintings and talk about composition for landscapes.
I think those books are going to be incredibly useful, but yeah hard to find in libraries sometimes and quite expensive!
Just remembered another great book about painting in general and that is Alla Prima by Richard Schmidt. Absolutely fantastic book on his knowledge and process. And of course can't go wrong with Gurney's Color and Light for light theory and a bit of colour theory too.