Story telling with composition?

 

Though my grasp of it is small, this is a subject that has fascinated me for as long as I've been drawing. Essentially the idea is that you communicate whats happening to the viewer through intentional guidance. Leading their view around the picture in order to put together a narrative. Seems simple enough, but its a lot harder than it looks. You have to take into account how to manage to get the viewer's eyes to stop first on the area you want to be the focal point.

So what are these two doing in this picture? Why are they doing it? Making these answers clear is my first job as an artist. every picture should have a message. And the first step to doing great art is having that message be clear.

Critique on this picture? I stopped it because it was unsuccessful for me. There isn't any depth, and the motion in it is stopped by Glisius's arms. But it was a learning experience, and I did succeed at least at conveying their aggressiveness. Sexy old men<3.

 I've fallen out of the habit of drawing regularly and its almost like a huge part of me is just AFRAID to start again. What is wrong with me? I was being so good reading this book every day and now I avoid it, as well as my other books, whenever I can.

So weird a feeling. I'm not exactly sure what to do about it. Am I afraid of success? I know that if I draw more often... and am more active I'll have a more reliable style and be more successful at what I do. But that's the thing. I KNOW its there and its a possibility but for the fucking life of me I can't grab it.

I rant too much about this. Here's the sketch. I liked the original lineart way better.

The Unsuccessful Portrait.

You know its really disheartening sometimes when you've got an idea and you think its solid. You go through the motions preparing it like you normally would. You start out liking it. But somewhere along the way the whole thing goes terribly wrong and you're left with a mess.

That's what happened with this picture the other day. It actually took a few days to get over it because I was so miffed about it. But ugh, I hate it. I have everything about it and it seemed like such a neat picture in the sketch. But I'm putting this up here as a lesson to myself. Don't go over using things. Less is more. Repeat, Less is MORE. T_____T

Poor Glisius, I'm sorry I butchered you.

This one of Xolasky, done tonight, was a bit more successful. I notice I've been watching myself a bit more and actually fixing things when I see errors. I'm certainly not to the point where I can throw out professional quality work, but I think I'm improving pretty fast.

I hope to continue moving on the path I'm on. That book I got is really helping a lot.

Two Paintings today.

Holy shit I spent a lot of time painting today. Jesus. I had no idea I could just sit down and throw put portraits twice in one day, but now I know. Both of these are portraits for myself. Nat wants me to play more furcadia. They allow human players now and even have human avatars, so I think I may actually enjoy it... we'll see.

This one here would be Bella. Given her living situation I bet she makes this kind of face a lot. This took approximately four to five hours to complete, as during a lot of it I was stumbling around trying to make sense of what I was doing. She was actually the later of the two.

Demi here was the first of the day. He actually took me about seven hours from start to finish. It was very hard getting back into the swing of painting directly with color instead of using values and tinting over them. But I need to be a bit more experienced with the former, so I did it this way.

I'm not used to making characters that I actually... enjoy? I mean I think of Cathirine and Sasha, the ones I made when I was younger and I never really thought they were all that great. God... I really should paint a picture of Koro... Oh god I do miss Koro. I need to paint a picture of Koro holy shit like... right now... so bad.

Or maybe I'll just toss that on my to-do list...