Many years ago I tried my hand at painting. I wasn’t a natural draughtsman, and colour was a total mystery to me, but what worried me most was the flat look that all my paintings had. The reason this happened was wrong composition.
Composition is the way different elements are arranged in a picture. Many artists place composition above both drawing and colour, because even if the drawing is impeccable and the colour of the highest quality, if the composition is at fault it will fail to satisfy the eye. But many impulsive beginners are so anxious to get on with the painting that they ignore composition.
There are some rules in composition that should not be forgotten. The painter must lead the eye of the beholder into the picture and not across it. Into the picture does not mean the center of the picture, but towards the center, to some focal point where the eye can rest and be content to remain. Also the painting should be balanced, a dark cloud at the top of the picture must be balanced by some other object in a different part of the picture. However it must not be completely balanced, this creates a kind of "tension" that makes the picture more interesting. In the picture I drew given below these principles are followed. The smoke stacks in particular are not balanced and create a tension. However, the most prominent feature of this drawing is a careless even crude use of line and colour that energizes the drawing I hope.
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