Rizian Art

Hello! Today I come to talk about "how to create a good composition of a scene", rather than a technical process I will tell you some little tricks and tactics to use when creating a scene and make it look more natural and dynamic. At the end of this short article you will have some basic tools to highlight items and make a difference when making the final art.

Let's get started!

To start I should mention the importance of the composition in each scenario, it is always important to see and bring out the elements in the image that we are developing, the aim of our drawings are not to simply illustrate with a good finishing touch, you have to know that a good image or piece of art always communicates something, and have a way to read it. Images are like books, have a beginning and an end, a walk on one side and the other salts, it is important to know which are the elements we want to highlight, the other elements that simply appear to narrate the scene and one that without them the scene just will lose personality and grace.

In the picture I posted at the top of this article we highlight as important elements to the two characters who appear in it, as they have a coloured subtly highlighting over the background, they have a completely different texture to that used in most elements that make up the image, it is also the place, the trees, the river and the sunset that through the colours and shapes show in the background where they are located these two people, and Finally there are the rocks, twigs, leaves and small lumps on earth because without these small elements that harmonize and give life to the image, this would not have the same impact.

There is a small visual theory which have guided me a lot since my college years, is on the visual weights and is called the Gestalt theory. To understand how it works I invite you to see the graph below:




The theory shows the trend of what is more harmonious to our eye and in which space you can put more or less weight, in fact if we put too many elements in the left up corner our image can become unstable and cause a nuisance eye of the viewer. A simple way to check that our image is well balanced is reversing the mirror image as to find possible errors:


There are some drawing software that have this option already built, it is actually very useful on the subject of the composition, because when you invert the image it will light some occasional little mistakes that can end up ruining our image and we never will realize. It is always important to also look at the elements within the crosses, this gives a complete view of the intervention of the elements and the dynamism, a part of which play with the weights always good but following the basic rules above all, you must first know them, understand them and end after break the rules.

I have prepared a video in which I made a quick sketch of a scenario in which I draw enough lines to give my shadows and highlight small features as I go along, I invite you to know my process:

Hello again! You are welcome to a new entry to my Blog Rizian Larc, this time I will show you my method to create and compose scenarios through small keys, instructions and an example I made specifically for this exercise, let's start!

Materials:

Traditional: 

- Sheet of paper or paper of your choice, preferably a disposable paper or already used.
- Colour chalk or colours (any of these will do).
- Eraser
- Hard pencil or mechanical pencil, also a soft pencil to add shadows.
- Pen or Ink pen.


Digital:

- Tablet (It can be Wacom, Genius, the one you have can be good).
- Photoshop, Paint Tool SAI, Autodesk Sketchbook Pro, any paint program of your choice will be perfect.

The background design has always been a problem for most people who want to enter the world of comics or illustration in general, we have all had problems with the scenarios and it's very normal because our eye is more accustomed to fixed at one point in time instead of appreciate all at once, for this will show you my tactic to cheat a little our eyes.

First, I call this technique the "stain", and I use it when I need to compose quite a scene in my comic or just to make an illustration with background included. The stain (colour) will help us to shape the basic forms that exist in our mind without having to go directly to add details and details, and there's the first mistake we can commit when drawing backgrounds, detailing and detailing at first. Let's proceed to see the image to keep explaining this step:



This technique helps to capture the basic shape of what we imagined in our minds so that it does not slip from the mind and stay longer the structure of what we are thinking, with basic shapes and a thick brush (colour) now draw the landscape stain that was on your mind in a short period of time before the idea escapes out of your mind.

It is important and I recommend doing this step with the colour of your choice and we will superimpose layers either traditional or digital mode to distinguish the colour of the final lines. Now we go to the next step:

Remember: If you're working in digital I recommend lowering the layer opacity to 15 or 25% where the stain is and create a new layer to keep working and if you're working in traditional I recommend a clean eraser to soften a little the stain and to start to work more freely about it.

Second, now that you have cleaned and softened the spot, now you can proceed to add details to the landscape that crossed our mind just now. Try to always shorten adding details and forget about perfection by this point, we need only identify basic shapes in this part of the process, which is the most important because that will define which elements will have our illustration. I recommend following this step with a coloured pencil slim pencil instead of a conventional gray traditional pencil for the reasons I mentioned above in the previous step.




With the added details and you have a base of what you wanted to achieve at the beginning, but in the process will occur to you "Hey, I just think adding new things possibly are going to see much better", no problem!, adding new things is not a sin, rather make it more harmoniously composition, in this way we can say that "we have deceived our eye".

I recommend you always try to superimpose objects in your compositions, or places focus in a "clear" in them to make the illustration shows what we want to show and not just be "a cute background" which is not what we want to accomplish in this exercise about compositing scenarios. I'm explaining this a little more in a newer entry about background, is called Composition and placement in backgrounds.

Always try to add as much detail as you can in this step so it can help you move to the next one, because the more lines you have drawn in this sketch the easier it will be to define the details and the stage itself.

Third, having our sketch now we can begin to define what is what, for example, the roof is a triangle, the rectangle is a fireplace, the two cubes are two wooden boxes, and things like that. For this step now I recommend using a thin brush of black in digital or a 0.5 or 0.3 mechanical pencil if you're working in traditional.




Regardless if you have a detailed or simple style as I mentioned in my post on "The Power of the Sketch" you can choose whether to add more or less details to each of the parts that you defined as objects in the image. Here we should already have completely the details that appear in our final image regardless of whether you added lines of force to it or not, that's choice of each artist.

Fourth, this is the last step in the process that I devised to compose a scene, is one of the most important to "prepare" our sketch before final production, whether coloured or just inking. This step is called the "shadow" here with a soft pencil or a brush medium in our drawing program we will add our drawing some shadows where needed.




It is always good to plan where they will go the shadows of our sketch as a guide to the finished illustration, and when we go to colouring or inking know where the light comes and not get to experience or invent shadows never have planned for the finished illustration.

Well, I hope you have served my tutorial on how to compose scenarios, I will deepen this and more issues related to drawing on the Blog, I'd love to know if this tutorial has helped you as I am new to the "education" and would love to know your questions or suggestions. Remember to always be attentive to answer questions and other concerns, to follow the Blog I recommend my page on Facebook, Twitter and also the subscription button on the sidebar.Thank you for reading my tutorial and see you next time! Greetings!