so what is composition? i'm gonna do a little bit of writing... and the long and short of
composition is that composition is just your art, right? it's the combination of all the elements of
art and design put together to make one big art piece. there are some important things
to note when you're doing composition. so let's first talk about your foreground, middle ground,
and background. alright... so let's just draw a beautiful little scene for a second.
so let's draw this beautiful.... beautiful background. so let's say we got our beautiful
mountains, which i'm going to color code in blue. let's say that there's -- in this mountain range,
there's a beautiful house, and there's a tree here too. a dog!
and let's say that we got some extra trees that are kind of just framing the composition here.
all elements within this scene make up a composition. so with this blue in the back,
right, you probably already guessed, that's your background. okay, so your background
is all elements that are furthest away from the viewer, and they're usually used to aid
the focal point in a composition. we'll be talking about the focal point later as well
when we get to the rule of thirds, which i'm throwing all these definitions out at you which i
have not gone over yet, but i will. so the middle ground is all elements between the background and
the foreground and is usually where your focal point is. right, so everything that is highlighted
in that blue is the background. everything that is done in pink is your middle ground, and this
green, last but not least, is your foreground. all elements closest to the viewer typically
frames the composition or focal point. see, your foreground -- you notice the trees, they kind of,
you know, go around the entire composition... you know, around the same area where the house,
is but it's almost like you're peeking through the trees, right? and it creates this nice border
that goes around the entire composition. these are necessary for scenes, but not for all art.
see your background, middle ground, and foreground is only necessary if
you have a background, middle ground, and foreground. if you're drawing a landscape,
you're gonna have a background middle ground and foreground. another thing i wanted to point
out with composition was the rule of thirds. it's... let's say that i got my canvas here.
so we got this common rain frog. the rule of thirds... so what i'm gonna do
is i'm gonna draw a grid over this whole thing, splitting up the entire canvas...
into three by three squares. so your rule of thirds is how you place your focal points on
a canvas. so by using a three by three grid that goes on your canvas, all the intersecting lines
are where your focal points should be. so that's these four points... are technically where your,
um, focal points should be. but you notice that my frog kind of hits two of those,
but i keep saying focal point. what the heck is a focal point? so focal point...
so your focal points are where the viewer's eyes will go first. what do you see first? if you look
at this froggy thing, you're most likely going to see the frog first. when you look at this one,
you're most likely going to see the house first. the house is also on the rule of thirds,
if you didn't notice. how you set up your focal point is with the rule of thirds, contrast,
and emphasis. your contrast, right, it's usually if you have one thing that stands
out amongst everything else, which is also your emphasis. let's say that i had, like, one little
yellow moon. those are two contrasting colors. the yellow is emphasized because there's less of it.
your eyes... the first thing that it goes to is that moon. if i added some more stars, your eyes
still -- the first thing that you see is the moon, right, because that moon is that bright, bright
yellow, it's on the rule of thirds, and it's also contrasted against all that purple. so let's draw
my death star in first... so this is actually -- the death star is gonna be my mid ground.
whenever i place something down, it is mostly just to fill in a composition a certain way.
so right now i'm using these x-wings to frame my composition,
right, these -- this x-wing in particular is in my foreground. so is this one,
right, and it creates this kind of -- it creates a somewhat -- a frame around here, basically.
so if you'll notice here as well i actually have both of these hitting the rule of thirds,
right, so i have this one in the back here and then also the death star over here.
so now is where i'm gonna actually start to get more concrete with my sketch,
because right now -- you know, your first sketch -- if you're doing multiple passes of a sketch,
your first sketch should not be like crazy detailed.
it's just there to kind of exist and to understand where you're going to place everything.
it's like now is where i'm going to get a little more advanced with stuff.
the number one thing when you're working with references is to draw what you see,
not what you think you see. that's kind of difficult for me because
all these shapes are very very low resolution and i'm like...
one thing that i'm doing that i don't think i mentioned, was -- is i am using leading
lines. the leading lines, um, are from our very first elements of art video, um,
where i talked about how leading lines can be used to emphasize a focal point. that's what i'm using
right now with the x-wings -- so making sure all the x-wings are pointing towards the death star.
see your eyes, kind of, immediately are drawn to the death star.
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