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Selecting the Best Composition for a Painting

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After creating many, many designs I selected the composition of dancing Sandhill Cranes on the lower right.  It has good motion, dynamics, overlapping images, and shows a more common relationship where some cranes dance and others watch.  I reduced this sketch 50%, darkened the room and projected the image onto a 48″ x 60″ stretched canvas using my ancient opaque projector.  Right in the middle of sketching the beamed image the projector light bulbs burned out and I was shocked not only to find replacement bulbs on my shelf, but dated 1989!  The first bulbs lasted 20 years, amazing, a testimony to how little I use this system for sketching my work onto the canvas.  Many times I just free from draw the subjects, but this time I wanted more control on such a big surface.

Gail Niebrugge, Alaska wildlife art

2 Responses to “Selecting the Best Composition for a Painting”

  1. Fredericka Cardinalli Says:

    Great post. Can I ask you a question? I want to start a blog as well that is why I was searching on the internet for blogs to use as examples, do you find you have to be perfect in your grammar to have people like what you write? I have been told I write like I speak, so I was wondering if that was a bad thing.

  2. gail Says:

    Thank you. The advice you have been given to be yourself is good advice. Best wishes, Gail

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