Composition ideas with the waterfall?
3yr
Siqi
Hi everyone! I'm Siqi, and I started a painting based on a photo I took of a waterfall. I roughly blocked in the colours today, but I'm not happy with the shape of the waterfall, and the photo doesn't conveniently offer an aesthetically pleasing shape, haha. I couldn't really figure out a better shape ... so any suggestions would be very much appreciated!
This is a bit of a branch of a dam-waterfall, so it starts from a pool of water at the top, and is kind of wide before it drops to a body of water at the bottom. Of course, I don't need to follow the exact structure of the waterfall, but in case that helps! Thank you! :)
1yr
Just noticed that this is a year old, apologies :D
Humm, interesting! A couple of suggestions:
- Perhaps the shapes of the highlights could help you in giving a more interesting shape overall to the waterfall? It could guide the flow of the piece, but it might be difficult to make it not lead the viewer's gaze "out of the painting" in the bottom-left!
- Maybe you could alter the shape of the surrounding rocks, or better highlight plane differences throughout the flow of the water. Those planes might help providing more depth and flow to the waterfall, and by extension the piece;
Anyways, it's looking pretty cool, nice work!
2yr
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3yr
There isn't really a focal point. Right now the biggest value contrast is where the trees meet the sky. In the second one it is also where you have the sharpest edges.
Also the tree line and the top of the rocks are kinda uninteresting, just very uniform shapes. If you are okay with bending reality a bit, you could try to change the shapes a bit while keeping an overall balance. Like make the rock shapes a bit more interesting on the left, and only have trees on the right. And of course make the waterfall the main focal point, push the values, shapes and details there. Just a suggestion of course, some paintings work without a specific focal point.
Siqi
3yr
Hmmm those are some really interesting suggestions, thank you for sharing them! I do want to have the waterfall as the focal point, but whew, is it ever hard to pull away from painting what I see in the photo (which, of course, has details everywhere)! I'll play around with your suggestions and see what I get! :)
HIi @Siqi
I am always struggling with composition on my own, so I maybe are not a big help... Your drawings are very rough. What is the main theme of your drawing? The water in the pool, or the waterfall? At the moment the falling water seems to be squeezed into the left corner. Deciding on the thing you want to make the focus point can help. Another thing: The sky and the water are very light, the rest of the landscape is dark. Light and dark take about the same area of your drawing. You could try to give the darks more space or the lights.
3yr
Thanks for your suggestions Dominik! I'm glad you noticed the roughness - it's what I'm trying to go for in my draft because I love rendering, and tend to get caught up in it early and then feel too invested to change things! You make an interesting point with the light and dark balance. Intriguing... I'm going to try to deviate from the reference more and try making the waterfall wider to see how that looks. Thanks again!
