Paintings by Cher Threinen-Pendarvis

For those of you who are new to painting, composition is the organization of the elements in an artwork. Many concepts go into the organization of elements in a painting, and there are many different creative approaches to designing a composition. Use your artist's eye and intuition when composing your paintings, and go with what looks pleasing to you.

Before you start an image, ask yourself the following questions:

What format will work best for your subject? Forms are organized within a picture frame, or picture format, on the picture plane. The picture frame is defined by the shape or proportions of the picture plane. The picture plane is the two-dimensional area where artists sketch, draw, and paint.

This figure shows a horizontal picture format and the two-dimensional picture plane. The picture plane (shown by the horizontal and vertical arrows) is contained within the picture frame, the outside boundary.

Where should I lay in the main elements—for instance, a horizon line? Your painting will have greater interest and balance if you divide the composition up unequally. For instance, instead of placing the horizon line so that it divides the painting into equal halves, which can be static, you can use it to divide the painting into one third and two thirds, or into one fifth and four fifths.

Along Tomales Bay with the horizon line placed above center, about three fourths to four fifths of the way up from the bottom of the painting. I decided on the horizon line intuitively when sketching the composition.

To demonstrate what the painting would look like with the horizon line at about center, I have modified a copy of Along Tomales Bay.

How will I organize my subject in relation to positive space and negative space? Negative space is the space around the subject, or around the positive shapes in the image. Positive space refers to the areas taken up by the subject of the painting.

The negative space in the Lemon Lily drawing is shown in gray. The positive space is shown in white.

The following artwork demonstrates some of my favorite composition concepts.

Rhythm and movement

In View From Point Loma, the brush strokes in the clouds, and the clouds' shapes, help suggest movement.

Volumes moving in space

In Path to Water West, you can see the volumes of the foreground plants moving from the foreground into the midground space.

Tension created by asymmetrical positioning of elements

As you can see in Along Tomales Bay, the converging diagonal lines help suggest deep space. Using an intuitive, energetic painting design

For me, the composition process is spontaneous, intuitive, and visual. The following is an explanation of some of the process and ideas that I used for a painting from my ongoing Paths series, Path to Water North.

Traditionally, I would use charcoal or pastel to sketch a composition on a rough-textured pastel paper. For this study, however, I sat under the shade of a tree and sketched en plein air, directly from life, with my PowerBook®, Corel Painter, and my Wacom® tablet. Working in Corel Painter, I used the Sharp Chalk variant of Chalk to block in the main contours of objects within a vertical picture format. I used a dark brown color that would blend well with the primarily warm color theme that I envisioned for my painting.

Using lines, I established the main contours of the objects, trees, masses of foreground grass, and the distant hillside within the painting. Next, I roughed in the general values to further explore the composition and to refine its balance.

Using line, I established the main contours of the objects, trees, masses of foreground grass, and the distant hillside within the painting. Next, I roughed in the general values to further explore the composition and to refine its balance.

This example shows the brown-line-and-value sketch that I drew on location.

Achieving color modulation and broken color

Next, I began the process of laying in and modulating color. To achieve texture and activity of broken color, I sketched with overlapping strokes, laying color over color.

For the masses of foliage and grass in the foreground, I used the Square Chalk and Large Chalk variants of Chalk to paint longer hatched strokes, subtly varying the color as I worked.

Blocking in color over color, I used energetic hatched strokes.

Painting overlapping color planes

As you can see in the massed blocks of grass, the color planes overlap, and sometimes warm color is laid over cooler color. The light on the hill inspired me to use complementary colors—so I brushed bright gold onto the hill, right next to the distant blue-lavender trees.

This detail of the background area of yellow field leading into the distant purple trees shows a few of the overlapping color planes.

Using lost and found line

After laying in color, I re-established the contours of elements as the painting progressed. In this detail, you can see the redefined line work in tree tops.

The faraway trees and the foreground trees show lost and found line along their edges. On the foreground trees, I used lost and found line to add highlights to the tree trunks. In the figure, notice the hints of thin, expressive line on the edges of some of the trees.

Finessing brushwork to achieve movement, rhythm, and repetition

As you can see from the images of the final painting and the last brushwork detail, I overlaid energetic strokes of lighter colors on the foreground grasses, intuitively suggesting rhythm and movement. Also, you can see similar strokes repeated in the large, voluminous grass shapes.

The loose, curved strokes on the foreground grass help add energy, rhythm, and movement.

Well done. You've completed this tutorial on composition. Happy painting!

Content and images: © 2006 by Cher Threinen-Pendarvis

An award-winning artist, author, and pioneer in digital art, Cher Threinen-Pendarvis has always worked with traditional art tools, and she has created illustrations with the Macintosh® computer for two decades. Cher has been widely recognized for her mastery of Corel® Painter™, Adobe® Photoshop®, and the Wacom® pressure-sensitive tablet and has used these electronic tools since they were first released. Exercising her passion for the artist tools in Corel Painter, Cher has worked as a consultant and demo-artist for the Corel Painter developers. Her artwork has been exhibited worldwide, her articles and art have been published in many books and periodicals, and she is a member of the San Diego Museum of Art Artist Guild. She has taught Corel Painter and Photoshop workshops around the world and is the principal of the consulting firm Cher Threinen Design.

Cher is the author of The Photoshop and Painter Artist Tablet Book: Creative Techniques in Digital Painting and all seven editions of The Painter Wow! Book. The Painter IX Wow! Book is the latest edition of this highly praised volume of techniques and inspiration.

To learn more about Cher, please visit her Web site at www.pendarvis-studios.com