Composition Class - 1

The title of the class is "Composing the Page." I seem to be taking sort of random notes which I'll transcribe here without trying to put them in much of an order. There's a lot of discussion which is not in my notes, so some of these statements may sound more arbitrary than they did in class.

• Composition helps the artist know what to say with a painting or reinforces what the artist is trying to say.

• When the elements of a painting don't touch the edge anywhere, they're not really connected with the world. They make a doughnut (or the hole therein).

• Dominance is one aspect of the painting standing out with the other aspects supporting.

• elements in a painting need to help move the eye around

• when a composition works, the negative space works as hard as the positive elements.

• eccentricities are elements in a painting which are not repeated (but repetition needs to have variation, too)

• when looking at a work, among other things, ask if it feels complete. Do I say "ehh" or "mmm"?

In this first class we were given sheets of printer paper plus some black paper and some brown, kraft paper and asked to arrange pieces of them in a pleasing way. For homework, we were to take one of the many resulting compositions, our own or anothers', and reproduce them varying the color schemes. My favorite of these compositions (not done by me!) is here, along with one of the possible 6 variations. This was done, roughly, my me on the computer from a tiny, rough sketch in my notes, so it's not really like the original but it will give an idea.