Snowy Retreat

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Comment by Patricia Anne Atkins on September 21, 2011 at 15:30

 Thank you Richard . I am taking your advice on board. I will try to work to improve this painting . I did not know the rules about cutting things in half .( I wonder who decides these rules )  

Comment by Richard Robinson on September 6, 2011 at 14:15

Hi Patricia thanks for your painting. I like that you've thought to balance your composition with the little house there, but it looks like you've pushed both the tree and the house off the side of the stage too far, leaving the stage (all that empty snow) as the star of the show when there's not much going on there to hold our interest.

One of the classic composition 'rules' is to not cut things in half with the edge of your painting and you've done that with your tree here. (I know it's tempting) The idea of making the snow centre stage like this will work much better if you added those long tree shadows to it to give it more interest, or a path/track leading through it - whatever will break up that big empty space.

My advice to you in general would be to spend more time looking at how and why a thing looks like it looks, and paint that knowledge instead of your idea of what a thing should look like. That's the biggest key to painting well - letting nature be your teacher.

 

Hope that helps some.

All the best,

Richard