Thursday, November 09, 2006
Education: Fundamentals of Composition Part One
This post is just the tip of the iceberg... see reason number 8 on our The Top Ten Reasons To Support The A-HAA for links to more great art instruction posts.
John Kricfalusi recently posted a series of great articles on his blog...
Composition For Layout And Background Artists: Framing
Composition 2: Intersection
Composition 3: Clear Staging
Composition 4: Staging Groups of Characters
Composition 5: Negative vs Positive Space
Composition 6: Asymetricality
Composition 7: Poses Working Together
Composition 8: Form vs. Detail, Lettering, Reference
Composition 9: Study Other Artists
Composition 10: Contrasts
Composition 11: Organic Shapes
Composition 12: Contrasts in Texture and Spacing
Composition 13: Scale
Composition 14: Form Over Detail
Composition 15: Form in Clouds
Composition 16: Flair
Composition 17: Reference and Inspiration
Composition 18: Scene Planning For TV Part One
Compostion 19: Scene Planning For TV Part Two
Compostion 20: More Inspiring BG Layouts
Seeing the fantastic examples by Mary Blair, Milt Gross and Jack Kirby reminded me how UN-designed many animated films and print cartoons are today. Mark Kennedy has a great post on Rhythmic Composition that you'll want to check out too.When I went to design school, I don't remember any real serious analysis of compositional techniques beyond the most basic principles. Compositions were critiqued with "gut reactions", which might be helpful in identifying a design that isn't working, but it doesn't help an artist trying to figure out how to improve and strengthen his work.
I dug through my reference shelves and pulled another invaluable lesson from the Famous Artists Course. This is lesson three from the Illustration Course this time. (For our previous postings from the Famous Artists Course, see Chad's Design for Television, and Willard Mullin on Animals.) In methodical fashion, the famed illustrators Albert Dorne, Norman Rockwell, Al Parker, Peter Helck, Austin Briggs, Ben Stahl and Fred Ludekens team up to break down the nuts and bolts of what makes a picture work.
COMPOSITION: How To Make Pictures
THE FOUR MAIN ELEMENTS OF COMPOSITION
1.) PICTURE AREA
For the second half of this lesson, see Fundamentals of Composition Part Two.
The Famous Artists Course was created in the mid-1950s by Norman Rockwell, Rube Goldberg and Albert Dorne, among others. The correspondence lessons and educational materials are still available at www.famous-artists-school.com. Books from the three courses: Painting, Illustration/Design and Cartooning turn up on eBay as well. I highly recommend these great resources to students.For our previous postings from the Famous Artists Course, see Chad's Design for Television, and Willard Mullin on Animals.
Thanks
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
Stumble It!
posted by Stephen Worth @ 2:57 PM
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21 Comments:
Oh wow, this is the ultimate post on composition.
I used to have a ww2 illustrator manual and it was just like this. Ill see if I can find it.
yes, please, More!! Judy W
Great stuff, Steve! Your posts are always very in-depth.
Fantastic post! Thanks so much for putting that up!
This is a great post and a great reason to keep supporting the archive.
-David O.
Post more, please. Books on composition are hard to come by and I've been looking for material like this for a long time now. Thank you. Pretty please with a crimson red cherry on top? A complete PDF would be the most awesome thing to have.
YES! HIM WANT MORE!
Having a copy of the Commercial Art and Illustration binders from 67, it is great to see the differenced in what you posted and what I have. Keep sharing. I just wish my cartooning course wasn't missing pages.
That cleared a lot of things up. Thanks for posting those notes.
Those are some great lessons, please post more, I'm learning heaps!
Grand stuff by masters of the medium. I posted a link to this at my blog.
this is the BEST thing i've ever read on composition. it is clear, consice, and articulate and the examples are perfect. this clears up a lot of things for me that were before confusing. The description of the wounded soldier, blew my mind, how everything was perfectly thought-out. I am going to study this a lot more. Thanks Steve!! this is super awesome!!
yeah it's great.please post more pages!!
Great stuff, thanks for posting and looking forward to seeing more!
Is there a section devoted to caricature?
Thanks---Alex Vogue
Yes, please! Post the rest of it!
excellent! invaluable lessons that make the complexities of composition simple. it is really enlightening and clears up alot of confusing thoughts i have in my mind about the subject. do post the rest steve......its really cool.
Which book or course are you getting this from the Famous Artists School?
This is from the illustration course.
Thanks
Steve
This stuff is excellent!
Another great source for pointers on composition is Jack Hamm's landscape book.
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