Three Things

                                    Spectacle Island


Three things make this composition work:  direction, color and value.

Other workshop teachers have often described their compositional devices in terms of letters.  In this painting, the letter A is present.  Both the large land mass in the foreground and the elements within it---the rocks, the log, and the textures-- point toward the island.

The contrast of color is also a factor in taking your eye to the island.  The single orange rock attracts immediate attention, largely due to its contrast to the complementary color blue surrounding it, but also because of its more or less pure quality.

Finally, the dark value of the island trees set up an obvious eye attractor.  Look closer at the dark value, and you will see a few specks of light that I left to break up the solid mass.  

The distant land masses and the undersides of the clouds provide the horizontal eye stoppers that I spoke about in a previous post.

If you have questions or suggestions about upcoming posts, please leave them in the comments section.