The Daily Paintworks Challenge

"On The Vine"
6" x  4.5"
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This week's Daily Paintworks Challenge is one of mine.  I hope you'll all give it a whirl!  (And many thanks to Carol Marine for the DPW site and her encouragement.)

The idea: This week’s challenge is to create a dynamic composition - really think outside the box - and pay particular attention to your design. I’ve listed a few of my favorite “rules to a good composition” that I use to help guide my students (and me!) to dynamic arrangements of space that will draw people into the painting. Feel free to use some of them, all of them, none of them . . . whatever helps you:

- create depth through foreground, midground and background & overlap shapes
- use diagonals (oh so much more interesting than horizontals!)
- use "run-off" (have objects run off the page on all four sides – but be sure to avoid having them just "touch" the edges)
- employ the rule of thirds (divide your paper into thirds rather than halves – horizon lines and focal points should all fall on these lines - stay away from centering - create INFORMAL BALANCE
- create “shards” of negative space (maintain interest through contrasting sizes and shapes of negative shapes)
- keep 80-90 percent of your space positive (enlarge your image to fit your space, no one wants to look at a page of empty space)
- use contrast (create apparent differences in size, shape and value)
- stagger objects (avoid lining objects up)

Have fun designing!