 Hello my friends in Monet Cafe. This is artist Susan Jenkins and I'm bringing you a lesson today that was a special request in our Facebook group, Monet Cafe Art Group. And the great thing about that group is we learn together and often we'll get suggestions or recommendations for a lesson and that's why I chose this one today. So the lesson in this is how do we work from a reference photo and create a good composition. And this is just going to be about good composition in general and what makes something a good composition and are there rules and absolutely there are ways that you can choose your crop to a photo to enhance your image to make it better painting and that's what we're going to do today. The great thing was I offered up a challenge to our Facebook members in Monet Cafe Art Group to use this particular reference photo. I tried to find one that had many different compositional possibilities and this one was a great photo. I got it off the Paint My Photo website where you can find free reference images to use or copyright free I should say. So you are free to use them to paint from. Often though I'll take an image and I'll crop it like we're going to do here. So I offered the challenge in the group and I got some wonderful crops from this one photo. I was amazed how many great possibilities there were from one photograph so I'm going to share those with you now and I'm going to show you why or why not. I think something makes a good composition and I think that will help you in your future painting and creating more lovely artwork. So let's get started and this is going to be fun. Alright so with this particular cropping of our original photo I happen to really like this one. I think it has utilized the rule of thirds quite nicely and if you're not familiar with that I've got a little pencil here that I can use in my Photoshop. I'm not going to do a great job with this because I haven't practiced this enough but basically it is dividing the image into thirds. As you can see I'm just like tic-tac-toe. One, two, three, one, two, three. So we've got three across and three down and what is typically a good composition is to avoid putting things right in the middle like right through here okay. I should say your horizon line okay. So your horizon line that is where the sky meets the ground okay. Not necessarily this tree line but the far distant where that horizon line would be and it's actually it's that part right back there okay. So as you can see look at that. That actually is almost right in that third quadrant and as we move forward into this lesson I'll talk more about you can put things on the lower third as well. This horizon line you could put down here, move your image down and the focus would then be on the sky. So you want to focus on your horizon line being in one of these third quadrants okay. And then in this photo too you happen to notice this bird. Now I typically would I think I would just leave it out unless it was very subtle but it happens to be placed really beautifully. Notice these little sections right here and these sections are the points of interest and notice they are in that little middle square on each corner and notice that this bird I believe this is a comorot. We have them in Florida here and or in Inhinga. There's two birds I can never tell them apart. They dry their wings before fishing in the water. They literally dive down and go fishing in the water. It's really cool. But notice he happens to be or she in one of these points of interest here. So that already we've got two things going for this composition right here. A good placement of the horizon line in the upper third and a nice point of interest here. Another thing I happen to like is we've got nice flows and entries in here with these marsh grasses. Look how that just leads your eye in and around and it's actually sort of got a little s-shaped curve. That's another composition tool that you can use for your good composition rules okay. So an s-curve and that's typically just you know in a art you will have like water that doesn't s-curve things like that. Grasses can do an s-curve. In figurative work you can have an s-curve so it's a really useful and beautiful way to make your compositions look more pleasing. So this has got like I said a lot of that nice entry this wide waterway entry into this composition is just lovely. So that one was really really a good one. Let's move on to the next. Now this is another one that I chose because I liked how they included more of the marsh instead of cropping out so much of it. So this is also very nice. One thing I noticed though that I would do differently with this one is I would not have this horizon line in the middle. Notice this is almost right in the middle of the the composition choice here. So what I would do in this case is I would lose some of that sky. I really do like this tree peeking up here. So you might just go just a little bit right right above that tree line there and that would push that horizon line higher. So again avoid the middle horizon line but again I do like so much that's going on in this photograph that would make a beautiful painting here. I do like how this person cropped it to where your eyes kind of flowing around this way. I happen to love anything with a lot of depth. Any kind of landscape. I just love your eye being drawn to wonder what is back there. Now this was I think this one and a couple others this was at the top of being one of my favorite compositional choices. I just really was just drawn to this. It almost looks like a painting already. The things that I like about it is that we don't have the composition line right in the middle. The middle would be probably more like right in here. Grab my pencil. And so this does have it a little higher than the middle which I which I like. It's not quite in the third but it's it's really close and it just seems to work so well. I love the the choice of where these trees are and how the water enters in such a way to where this feels balanced. I think it's perhaps these grasses here kind of really balance out what's going on over here. And so it feels balanced compositionally. Again we've got that nice S-shaped curve going on here with the water. It just kind of meanders through the photograph or the soon-to-be painting that draws your eye in. And again that beautiful distant horizon that you could portray with some bluer tones and paler values to give that illusion of distance. So again I love this composition. This was one of my favorites. All right again this is similar to the other one except that it put the horizon line in the lower third. Notice that that's what I was saying at the beginning is that you can choose to do more sky if you want. And some people they're just drawn to paint skies and they they do them well so that this would be a better choice for you. I love to paint skies too so and clouds and so again we've got almost the same thing going on here with with this composition having this nice water going through and drawing your eye back in there. You've got these other little points of interest back here. My pencil is way too dark for this. You just want the eye to to flip around and enjoy this painting. Again I would lose that bird that's obviously you don't ever want to have anything cut off at a composition like a bird like that. I mean that's pretty obvious but even these grasses a little bit peaking up there I would just make it really soft if I was going to include some of these grasses in here. So again a beautiful compositional choice. I really liked this and I would actually repaint this again using this one too. Loved it. It was really awesome. Now I really liked this choice too. I think we typically go with a crop that is more in standard sizes where you've got like a five by seven eight by ten and sometimes we forget that we can make a very tall or very wide format which I find very pleasing. The only disadvantage to these types of crops is that you can't use standard frames. You'd have to get a custom frame but hey why not. If the piece comes out beautiful I think you should just go for it and again this one has a beautiful positioning of the horizon line and just draws the eye into it. Once again that bird is not really in a great spot here it's more like in the center horizontally in the center so I would lose it or change it or move it somewhere else but again a lovely very tall format here I like it. All right I wanted to point out this one because we need to remember that if you have the access to be able to do some manipulations to photographs why not. I think the great master painters would have used whatever tool they had at their resource so why not use it to get ideas of how you might oversaturate the color like has been done here a little bit. I mean you really get a hint of what these colors really are when you push up the saturation like that or the vibrancy to the photograph. So I do like what this person has done to accentuate the color and to create a painting perhaps that just really is gorgeous with color. Now again I think the horizon line is a little bit too much in the middle here so I would either lose a little at the bottom or lose a little at the top probably I don't know I think it could work either way but anyway use whatever tools you have at your fingertips to help you with making choices for your painting nothing wrong with that at all. All right this next one I liked because it was totally different than the other crops and there is so much beauty in let me change this in reflections so I think that would be the star of the show in this would be the gorgeous reflections here this is just going to be a little bit of these grasses kind of drawing your eye a little bit into the distance here but these reflections here is what's really going to make this one sing and some of the dancing around of the water and things going on here again I would focus on more of a Richard McKinley approach to some of these you mean you could add a little more detail in some areas but not everywhere and I think this would really make an interesting painting again your eye is drawn in here I feel like this wide area is almost like a V in here and you're drawn into this painting and you explore all these beautiful reflections here so again a beautiful composition choice that one oh yeah again a wide format remember how the one we had a vertical kind of skinny one this one's not quite as thin as that one was tall but again that nice thinner wide format beautiful composition line a horizon line right down here in a lower third and again this just this photograph just had such great promise to it for a painting with the gorgeous way the water's flowing these reflections here are going to be really really interesting and nice this tree not quite in the middle I think the middle would be more like right here so this is better and this reflection is going to be really really nice and interesting here so again I was amazed at you guys in Monet cafe art group you just I just love you guys because I learned from you you all the time I thought this photo that I offered had a lot of composition choices but you guys just really shined with this one and I was really impressed with your choices lots of good choices here all right so this next one here again oh I think someone might have done a little bit of computer manipulation to enhance some of the color and everything gorgeous gorgeous another one of my favorites I can't quit saying that one's my favorite because there's so many good ones again look at that nice horizon line oh look at this water just flowing in and out on these marsh grasses I just love that gorgeous choice I there's not much else I can say about this one it's up it's just beautiful really really nice I would definitely keep the clouds and they are very strong compositional element there all right so now let's look at this one another one that I really liked that's more of a square often we tend to stick with the standard formats of the the way they're laid out whether they be a portrait like a five by seven or eight by ten you know we've got that difference in the height versus the width but in this case it's almost a perfect square and I really love that I often forget to paint in perfect squares like that but this is really nice I like how there's just a little bit of the see this horizon line back there there's just a little peek it's almost just enough to to just draw you in here and and play around and just say oh what's back there behind that so very interesting composition the bird in this one this works well notice how you got a little bit of that bird's reflection here so that does work well this could work well with the bird or without again I would keep the bird subtle don't get overly obsessed with detail oh these uh grasses in this bush just balance this out so well with this tree that's here and weighted more here there's a nice balance I think it works better with these grasses than if there weren't any grasses so again a nice nice composition all right guys so I think we are at oh oh no this was one more I wanted to share this one um notice anything different about this it was flipped uh horizontally and I do this quite often with photographs I'll flip them just to see if it feels right um the other way and this one actually does just work beautifully flipped on its horizontal um axis there so anyway great job on this one now I did choose one that I was going to work from and now I'm going to go into the actual painting process of that but anyway if you haven't joined Monacofe art group on Facebook you should check it out we got a lot of great member members it's a beautiful place for us to share and grow together and uh it feels different than any other art group I've ever been in on Facebook and I I don't think I'm being prejudiced to you guys but anyway all right guys so let's get on with the painting now for this painting I chose a piece of Sennelier Lecart sanded paper and I was saying that name wrong for so long I think I said Sennelier so pardon me I do have some redneck in my DNA but I like to think I'm a bit sophisticated too um but anyway I know you guys don't mind we've got such a great group here and I chose a new pastel it's a harder pastel that I'm using here that rosy color and I chose more of a warm tone or shade because I wanted the it's like with an underpainting you typically pick something complimentary and this would be a nice complementary almost like an opposite color on the color wheel to the greens of the marsh grasses and the trees and things like that so I thought this would make a nice uh sketch uh a color for a sketch for the underpainting and now I'm going to gradually start adding in some other pastels I pretty much have my basic sketch done here and uh in the distant trees I'm looking to get that the darkest thing in this composition is obviously those trees and typically anything vertical like trees are going to be darker because the sun is not hitting them directly um like it is on the grasses so I'm kind of exploring and experimenting here with my darks and a lot of times I let the color set the mood of the painting instead of going by what I actually see in the photograph I get started with um some colors and then I sort of let those be the guide instead of the photograph and you have to make sure your values are all uh cohesive and work well together so I like to play around with color a lot now I'm just going to uh continue this uh painting video here without any more voice over and I typically don't like to always do the uh fast forward like this because I know a lot of you guys requested not doing the speed painting um so you can actually see what's going on but this was more about a compositional lesson and so I feel this video is getting a little long but uh just enjoy the painting process I keep this one a bit moody because that uh la carte paper is already uh that uh blueish greenish grayish uh tone and uh it just felt I don't know like almost like that right before the sun's going down or something so again letting the color set the mood and having fun with this one so enjoy guys and I hope you learned a lot about composition and again please check out the facebook book group if you haven't already known a cafe art group and uh join the fun all right guys happy painting