What Does a Butterfly Have to do with Composition?

'Winter Wildflowers'              8x10           pastel           ©Karen Margulis      available $250

I haven't been able to paint as much as I would like lately. We went on a camping trip and stumbled on another project. More details to come this week but it has been keeping us very busy! So it felt great to paint again this weekend. I started with a 3 hour livestream presentation and demo for the Arkansas Pastel Society and ended with creating some videos for my Patreon group. Of course I selected one of my Florida camping photos for inspiration. I was pleasantly surprised to see some wildflowers clinging to the dunes in February! They became my first painting subject of the month.

This month on Patreon we are focused on composition. It is our Composition Bootcamp month and I am excited to share some of my ideas for creating stronger composition. I came up with an interesting way to remind us what we need to consider as we design and paint....how can we keep the viewer engaged and moving through the painting? I will be sharing tips this month but here is a visual.....

Imagine a butterfly flitting through your landscape painting. You need to give your butterfly places to rest...interesting areas to explore before moving on to the next interesting resting place. Can you imagine that? (if you are a patron be sure to watch the video today for a reminder)

In my wildflower painting I designed the painting to have strong dark shapes under the grass to gently direct the eye through the painting. I placed the flowers in such a way that a butterfly (or the viewer of your painting) hav a way to move through the painting by resting on some interesting areas. 

Join us on Patreon fro much more on composition this month! www.patreon.com/karenmargulis