When you’re painting or drawing a still life scene, composition is everything. While technique and expertise are crucial, it’s the subject of a piece that draws the viewer in and makes them want to study your work. Wondering how to compose something interesting? We’ve got a few ideas for you to consider before you begin setting up your still life scene.
3 Questions to Ask Yourself When Composing a Still Life Scene
But first, a few questions to ponder:
What’s the tone of your piece? Art elicits emotion. Is your piece going to be serious and somber? Exciting? The tone will affect your composition as well as your color palette. Will your elements be placed in such a way that they communicate action and movement or stillness and contemplativeness?
What’s the focal point? Which element of your composition should the viewer’s eye be drawn to first?
Are you attempting to tell a story? Will your elements lead the viewer’s eye from one object to another to communicate a message?
Composing a Still Life Scene for Painting or Drawing: 13 Tips
Keep your answers to these questions in mind as you review the following tips for setting up a still life scene and don’t forget to employ the key rules of design, BRUCE (balance, repetition, unity, contrast, and emphasis).
Compose your piece with an odd number of elements. The old rule of designing in threes exists for a reason – odd numbers create imbalance, which creates interest.
Vary the textures of the objects you choose. Too much of the same is boring and texture can add just as much interest as shape, color, and placement. On that note, the objects you choose don’t need to be pristine, or even clean. Wrinkles, dents, even trash can all add interest to a piece.
Consider the shapes, colors, and sizes of the pieces in your composition. You’ll want to include a variety to provide contrast, particularly when it comes to your focal point.
Yes, you want contrast, but watch the patterns you’ve combined – you want just enough to be interesting, but not so many that it’s distracting or overwhelming.
The placement of the elements in your composition can serve to direct the reader’s eye, either from element to element to tell a story or pointing the eye directly to the focal piece.
Many artists follow the Golden Ratio or Golden Spiral. Based on the mathematic concept discovered by Fibonacci, this is simply a means of keeping elements in proportion to one another.
Likewise, many artists employ the Rule of Thirds, dividing their scene into three roughly balanced sections, either horizontally or vertically. This prevents the artist from composing a piece where the focal point is front and center (boring) and forces a bit of imbalance (interesting).
You’ll also want to make sure your composition has a clear foreground, middle ground, and background to add depth and perspective to your piece. In the case of the ubiquitous fruit basket, you might want to show the floor, table, and wall, rather than just the fruit basket in your frame.
At least some of your pieces should overlap. It’s not necessary to see the whole banana.
Pay attention to the negative space created by your objects. The shapes and shadows of your negative space should be just as interesting as the positive space.
Playing with the angle from which the viewer sees your composition is a good way to add interest. Check out your composition from above, below, and the side – any of these might be more interesting than the head-on view of your set up.
While you’re reviewing your angles, be aware of your light source and the shadows and shine it’s creating. If you don’t have any shadows, consider using a light source that will create some, adding both depth and interest.
Once you’ve reviewed these rules, go back and look at your composition again with fresh eyes. You’ll likely need to play with it to get it just right.
Do you review still life composition with your classes? What other advice do you have for setting an interesting scene? Let us know in the comments!
The central positioning of an object versus an off-centre arrangement is critical to the personality of the still life composition. Symmetrical composition, with a central focus and relatively similar amounts of space on either side forms one of the most stable and simple arrangements.
A great “still life setup hack” is to really see your subject from all angles. If you have a lazy Susan or some sort of revolving tray handy, place the hardware on a flat surface and lay a sturdy board over it.Arrange your objects and drapery on the board.
Still life includes all kinds of man-made or natural objects, cut flowers, fruit, vegetables, fish, game, wine and so on. Still life can be a celebration of material pleasures such as food and wine, or often a warning of the ephemerality of these pleasures and of the brevity of human life (see memento mori).
How do you create a still life? A still life drawing is created by placing objects in a design setting that utilizes available light and contrasts in shapes in an eye pleasing manner. The artist sketches the basic shapes first and continues to fill in details and/or color until the desired outcome is achieved.
But a bad background can draw attention away from the subject and prevent the viewer from appreciating its beauty. So before you take a single photo, evaluate the background. Look for distractions in the form of lines, shapes, or even colors.
Firstly, you can use this ratio to determine the size of your canvas: a Golden Rectangle is a rectangle in which the ratio of the lengths of the sides is 1 : 1.618 (to calculate a Golden Rectangle, you would choose any length for one side, and then multiply that length by 1.618 to get the length of the other side: for ...
This still life is of just one object. Often, still lifes contain many objects, but they do not have to. This painting is from the Netherlands, where many of the most famous still lifes come from. Look at the incredible level of detail in such a small painting!
A still life ( pl. : still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or human-made (drinking glasses, books, vases, jewelry, coins, pipes, etc.).
By dividing your focus area or canvas horizontally and vertically into three sections and then aligning areas of focus on the intersections of those lines, you can create balance in a still life. Avoiding unintentional repetition will also help to create a strong still life.
An important element of still life art is the mastery of lighting. Artists play with shadows and highlights to create a sense of drama and depth. The way light and shadow is used breathes life into inanimate objects, transforming them into poetic compositions.
The first secret to excellent composition in photography is the concept of the 'Rule of Thirds'. Rather than placing the subject in the middle of the frame, an image is divided into thirds both horizontally and vertically, creating nine equal parts.
Good still life compositions have balance so use the rule of thirds to help establish this balance. When arranging, take a photo of the objects using a grid of 3 X 3 squares (most phones will have this in their camera settings), otherwise you can fold an image in three vertically then three horizontally for the grid.
Introduction: My name is Arline Emard IV, I am a cheerful, gorgeous, colorful, joyous, excited, super, inquisitive person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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