Landscape composition

The Artist’s Magazine January/February issue 2015 had an article on landscape composition, but it was these thumbnail sketches that illustrate the concepts which I found to be the most helpfu…

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Remember that with only a quick read, the audience should know where they are and have a pretty good idea about what is happening. In other words, your design needs clarity, which can be achieved when it’s based on solid structure and composition principals.Â

So my students have been learning about composition. It was really fun teaching this to my 3rd - 6th graders. Here are some examples I did for the classes. I used a pencil to sketch, a sharpie to outline, crayons for coloring. Finding the visual sweet spots — First I drew 3 examples on the white board. (I had them mostly drawn before the students got there. FYI.) I talked about good composition, vs. poor composition. (See photos below.) I also brought in a bunch of my landscape paintings…

Downloadable PDF page about how to do great compositions for landscapes. Instructional file in PDF.

In this blog post I am going to show you how you can create atmospheric perspective in a landscape painting as I show you how to paint this mountain valley scene.What is Atmospheric Perspective?Simply put, using atmospheric perspective is a way of creating the illusion of distance and depth in a landscape painting, for example making distant hills and mountains look like they are far away.