Train the eye
In the last lesson I showed you the basics of Procreate.
In this lesson we will talk a little more about what composition is
and how I use that concept for my work.
Actually, I didn't see the importance of this
until I started using it in my work
and I realized that it helped to better tell my story
if I paid a little more attention to the composition.
There are different types of composition and a lot of theory around the subject.
In the Resources part I will leave you this page along with another pair
so that you can check it and you can inform yourself a little more.
You should know that you can help yourself with different elements
to form a good composition.
An example that this page gives us is the balance, the color,
the scale, the shapes, even the typography,
and it also puts us in a visual way, that I loved this map,
the lines or guides for your composition.
These are some guides that you can base on your work canvas
and they help you to have a better composition result.
There are different types and I think the best known
are the rule of thirds, the golden ratio
and the radial composition,
but any of these can help you.
It depends on what story you want to tell, what elements you will use,
and you have to take all of this into account.
A good example of this are photographs,
film shots or paintings that apply these guidelines.
In these images they are shown with these red lines
what kind of composition there is and what lines you draw with the elements.
Perhaps at first glance they are not noticeable,
but these lines help you see it more clearly.
Here your head is forming a downward triangle
if you join it with your hands.
Here is the rule of thirds,
where in this first is his shadow, here is the boy and here there is nothing.
The ladder there is a diagonal line
that gives you an address.
I like this example
because it has many elements at the bottom,
but, if you notice, everyone raising their hand
they make you look at the tip of the triangle, which is where the girl is,
then a balance and a guide are created.
You are guiding the observer, who turns up to see the girl.
Here's how these lines help you tell a story.
This not only applies to photography or paintings,
it helps us as illustrators.
I will give you some examples of companions that illustrate.
Here we can see that the image is divided in two.
In this quadrant are the girl and the tiger
and here are the flowers,
but we know that the main quadrant is this.
This is where the observer will look,
so much for the color it uses,
because, if you notice, this blue does not use it elsewhere in that way.
He uses it in small details, but this is where he concentrates.
And like these lines, his arms and the arrow,
lead you to look at his face.
And everything is balanced because it places these flowers.
From the same illustrator and with the same elements
there is this composition, but here it is already a little different.
In color it is balanced,
but still the lines lead you to turn to see the eye.
The eye is central to this.
and it also has symmetry, so it looks balanced.
Another example is this image for an Uber project.
Here we do not have a central focus.
The images do not lead us to see only one point,
rather all the elements are all over the "canvas".
But it doesn't look stuck, it doesn't look dirty, it doesn't look unbalanced,
by uses color in equal proportion everywhere
and it is distributing the characters so that everything is seen in harmony.
Another thing are these black spaces
that help you precisely so that your image is not saturated,
gives it some air.
In this image, symmetry was used to make it look balanced.
If you notice, if you put a line here
the elements are reflected, it is like a mirror.
But to make it look more interesting,
puts these little elements that break a bit with that symmetry.
They are small exactly so that they do not pull
all the weight towards them.
There are many elements that you can mix
to create an interesting composition.
It is only that you give yourself a chance to experiment with color,
with symmetry, with hierarchy.
Check the pages that I shared with you
and see what of all that you can apply in your work.
Something that made a big difference in how I draw and my illustrations
was when they explained to me that the elements and compositions
they could be decomposed into basic figures.
If we apply this reverse process,
it's a great base to get started.
I will give you an example of how I do this process with this image.
The first thing we will do is see the elements that compose it,
give us an idea of what kind of composition it is.
It is not important that you identify the type,
but more or less you know what you are working with.
Here what we will do is locate the main elements.
Number 1 is the girl who is sitting in the chair.
And the second object that attracts us is the crow in his hand.
And what I do with these elements is see or give me an idea
what figures make them up.
For example, the raven's head is a circle.
Obviously its peak is a triangle,
and thus go little by little decomposing this image.
We don't have to see the picture exactly,
but our imagination puts it there.
And since we have it ready,
if we remove that image we would already have a good base
to draw a girl sitting with a crow.
It doesn't have to be the same
but it already gives us the proportions that we would need to continue.
Here we find the secondary objects, those that remain in the background.
For example, the chair or these books, which are not the ones that pull you at the beginning.
And we repeat that process again
with those who are in the foreground, in the background,
and so we go consecutively.
We are done and we have the image broken down into small figures.
It no longer looks as imposing as it started out.
I already showed you how to decompose an image.
You can practice with others, this is just an example.
In the next lesson I will teach you how to create new objects
with this same process, but in reverse.