I got to admit, I enjoy these "technical" videos, that talk about something general so much more, than the ones, that teach about how to draw something very specific.
I really love how you approached this topic. It was very well put together, and really helped me to better visualize the differences between each composition. I have to say when you had the really big tree in the scene, it made me think of a cowboy that somehow managed to avoid being hanged, and it made me think it would have looked really cool to have a noose hanging from the tree.
Great video. Sun gives shadows which alter the shape of the other elements; move the sun and those shapes change and move...endless fun with that! How about a vid on shadows? Great way to show form.
Love the video! I would be interested in a follow up on how to use composition to evoke certain emotions. Like that final image with the fence - it's my understanding imagery like that is best used to evoke the feeling of being trapped or imprisoned, since the cowboy is physically inside a restrictive box. I know you have talked in the past about the "uneasiness" we feel in worm's eye view perspective. So I would love to hear more of your thoughts!
I loved the way this was done. The cutouts being moved around really make your point and make it easy to understand what you're illustrating. Thank you!
I've watched this channel off and on since about 2010 i think. I'm still amazed by how you can be amused by the smallest things. "Cacti.. *chuckle*". Definitely a great dude, it makes your videos more fun and personal
That was one of the greatest videos I've seen on this channel ever, Thanks for the great topic and the interesting explanation. please make more videos about composition
4:35 I quite like this version a lot out of the first three, I think what makes it very appealing is how the tree acts as a "secondary frame" to guide the viewer to the main subject. It's also why the fence works too. Some comic book art does this and it's pretty neat
I kinda like it when the sun alligns with the rider, has that mystical vibe. Probably will look odd when rendered but having a floating object over the main focus element has a cool effect.
This reminds me of the time I really couldn't understand colour theory and using simple shapes (like a triangle for a tree) until I read this book. It used Little Red Riding Hood as an example as they did all sorts of crazy things with simple cut out shapes of different sizes and colours on a blank piece of paper and told a whole story. Blew my mind.
Loved the laying down of the cactus at the end :D and I think the cut-outs were an absolutely brilliant idea. As always after watching your stuff I feel entertained and educated, thank you sir.
Mr Mark could you please make a video about foreshortening, it would be awesome and fits this type of videos, thanks for all your time and effort, I really appreciate it
Thank you for sharing this, I've always struggled with composition. The chapter about it in your Two-Pencil Method book helped a little, and this just added to the learning experience :)
I think I have hard time knowing when the composition is working, especially when I spend long time tweaking things. This was a great video, helps me appreciate some of my own compositions!
Another good thing to look up, in addition to the Golden Ratio, is the Rule of Thirds. It primarily applies to film, but with this sort of Landscape layout of the panel, it would definitely apply. Adding the fence, illustrates that point, as it broke the panel up into horizontal and vertical 3rds.
Playing around w composition like that is really smart! It's very Thinking Outside The Box-y i think it's a good way to play around with different aspects of what you want to convey! Anyway i thought that was cool
Interesting approach of showing different ways of coming up with a composition of the same scene! It can be never ending with ideas I guess, but I enjoyed how u approached the ideas in this video :D
Whenever he put the fence on the paper, what the picture looked like made me think the picture's story is that the cowboy is tired of his life on the ranch (for whatever reason, idk) so he's leaving to just go wherever with his horse.
This was very interesting and useful. I always struggle to decide what position to put things in in a picture. I like the idea of putting something in the extreme foreground - good call. I wonder if anyone else noticed that the smallest cactus looked like it had a little face drawn on it 😂
I really needed this video. As I'm working through my web comic, I find it harder and harder to figure out the right composition for my scenes and as I progress they just seem to getting more crowded than what I initially intended. Thank you for these very clear and easy to understand explanations. Sadly, these are topics that my university classes skip right over, so it's always helpful to have other resources to turn to.
👍 I was wondering, Mark, if you could talk a bit about composition as it relates to a script or storytelling? I would say this was something somewhat technical, but what if you want to set the scene, or convey a character's (in this case a cowboy's) feelings of solitude? Or of being overwhelmed? Or being dead, like in Shane? Also, is there a difference in accomplishing some of the above goals in changing the framing? What I mean is, would an extreme vertical framing convey a different feeling?
This was an amazing approach and now all I want is to move cut out drawn elements on different backgrounds! I am taking an acrylic painting class atm and we are completely immersed in the golden ratio - the teacher, who I actually really like and who knows her stuff is adamant that any composition we do lines up with tgr and it always turns out pretty good, but it also feels really restrictive atm, so it was so good to stretch a little, because I am really more into instinctive composition myself! Aaaah! Thank you!!
Great video. I am a abstract collage artist and I am always struggling with with composition. I loved the fence. I would love to see a video just on creating drama with diagonal lines.. and better yet, when it does NOT work.
I didn't realize this before, but some of the more awkward compositions could be used in a comic sense. Like the empty space at 6:33 being one panel and the next being a duplicate but with a shadow creature materializing in that space making the self correction a different type of visual satisfaction.
I do think about the composition before I draw my landscape drawing as well. But since I have a background of photographing landscapes. Rule of third helps me to create landscape I want as well.
This was a wonderful video, easy to digest and understand! I think the cutouts help a lot, also maybe because I am the "learning-by-doing" type and seeing the different layers/elements actually physically being touched and moved around on the background really helped me to understand how it all comes together. Thank you!
I think, the position of the man on horseback implies a story. If he is more on the right side, he's arriving on the scene, more on the left side, he's leaving, put him in the center something should be indicated that's going to happen, like the horse's head is up, the hind legs firmly on the ground, the horse looks tired or sweaty, the man is about to get off. If in the center, the horse's head is up high, the man holds the reins and turns toward the horse, he's about to mount and get away. - The directions right, left depend on in which direction the center of attention is moving. Have a mirror image of the man, switch right and left. I think your idea of creating "masks" of the elements you want to include makes deciding which is the composition of your choice easier.
Composition still scares me, to the point that I subconsciously avoid complicated backgrounds or too many objects in a drawing in order to not having to "compose" :'D But I've started to make little crude thumbnail sketches of what I have in mind before I start committing, like you mentioned at the beginning - it helps a lot by taking away that doubt of "What if I commit to this and after two hours I don't like the placement of this character anymore?" Great video, Mark, very nicely visualized! (But I wish you ended it with a what-the-hell-composition with cactus-clouds, sun in front of the fence and the horse upside down :P)
I dont know about other artists, but it's pretty instinctual at this point. I think that if you've drawn many times, that's what happens. Like cooking. After a while, you don't need to measure anything.
I don't know if I'll ever start to draw "seriously", but I enjoyed watching the video. My imagination started to work, and I saw myself in the scene. I noticed that I have my own preferences, but I haven't explored them yet. One thing for sure, I usually draw moving objects to move towards the centre. It's like the start of a scene. If the object moves out, that feels like the end. And I never write endings to my stories. 😆
There are no laws in composition, but there certainly are rules. You can break them, but breaking them always leaves a question, and unless that question is answered, the image will look unfinished.
What you say at 7:33 is super important. If you want to make the audience uncomfortable for a particular reason, compositions like that can work really well
I think we need to distinguish between composition of a stand-alone piece and a frame in a comic. The latter needs to take into consideration the purpose of the frame which will put constraints on the composition. E.g., do you already have key elements you don't have much choice about, e.g., you've already shown certain important elements in previous frames so you don't have as much choice about them, or you want to elicit or portray specific emotions such as loneliness, departure, conflict, loyalty, shame, etc. based on where you are in the story.
I got to admit, I enjoy these "technical" videos, that talk about something general so much more, than the ones, that teach about how to draw something very specific.
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Using cut outs was a great idea instead of drawing out every composition. Another great video, Crilley!
"I guess it's time for me to lay down this cactus..." lol
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I really love how you approached this topic. It was very well put together, and really helped me to better visualize the differences between each composition.
I have to say when you had the really big tree in the scene, it made me think of a cowboy that somehow managed to avoid being hanged, and it made me think it would have looked really cool to have a noose hanging from the tree.
Time to cut out a tree with a noose and see how it looks :)
Great video. Sun gives shadows which alter the shape of the other elements; move the sun and those shapes change and move...endless fun with that! How about a vid on shadows? Great way to show form.
6:18 something really wholesome about watching Crilley crack himself up so much
Love the video!
I would be interested in a follow up on how to use composition to evoke certain emotions. Like that final image with the fence - it's my understanding imagery like that is best used to evoke the feeling of being trapped or imprisoned, since the cowboy is physically inside a restrictive box.
I know you have talked in the past about the "uneasiness" we feel in worm's eye view perspective. So I would love to hear more of your thoughts!
I loved this demonstration! The cut outs really helped to move the pace along, and gave you an opportunity to show your ideas on the fly. Super!
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I loved the way this was done. The cutouts being moved around really make your point and make it easy to understand what you're illustrating. Thank you!
I've watched this channel off and on since about 2010 i think. I'm still amazed by how you can be amused by the smallest things. "Cacti.. *chuckle*". Definitely a great dude, it makes your videos more fun and personal
That was one of the greatest videos I've seen on this channel ever, Thanks for the great topic and the interesting explanation. please make more videos about composition
This was a great video. By using the cut-outs it was easy to grasp the concept. Thanks again.
I like the cutouts. It's cute and it helps to show that great drawings can look bad if not placed in the right spot.
4:35 I quite like this version a lot out of the first three, I think what makes it very appealing is how the tree acts as a "secondary frame" to guide the viewer to the main subject. It's also why the fence works too. Some comic book art does this and it's pretty neat
I love this video. Composition is one of the hardest things to "master". Great video.
🎶 I'm a poor lonesome cowboy and a long way from home... 🎶
It's only a matter of time before he makes a 30-minute blushies composition video. Calling it now. 😂
Whoops, the sun flipped over. Somebody help the sun!
Just flip that horse so that it points towards the center, so you drive the eye INTO the drawing! Its really weird to see trying to escape the page :P
Love this way of teaching, with pre-made movable elements!
Excellent video Mark! Thanks
Love the idea of using the cutouts!
I kinda like it when the sun alligns with the rider, has that mystical vibe. Probably will look odd when rendered but having a floating object over the main focus element has a cool effect.
I love this approach! Seeing it done like this makes it so clear and simple that I finally know how to fill a picture. Thank you!
This reminds me of the time I really couldn't understand colour theory and using simple shapes (like a triangle for a tree) until I read this book. It used Little Red Riding Hood as an example as they did all sorts of crazy things with simple cut out shapes of different sizes and colours on a blank piece of paper and told a whole story. Blew my mind.
Great approach. The cut outs were perfect for the demonstration.
This was educational, but the fact that you made a bunch of cut outs is super creative and cool!
I've just ordered mastering manga 1,2 and 3.. thank you for inspiring me to get back into art
Loved the laying down of the cactus at the end :D and I think the cut-outs were an absolutely brilliant idea. As always after watching your stuff I feel entertained and educated, thank you sir.
Awesome video Mark been away for awhile good to see your videos again. Thanks for all the useful information. ❤😊
Excellent idea to cut out the element and then move them around to find the best composition. Thanks for that tip.! 👍🙂
Mr Mark could you please make a video about foreshortening, it would be awesome and fits this type of videos, thanks for all your time and effort, I really appreciate it
Thank you for sharing this, I've always struggled with composition. The chapter about it in your Two-Pencil Method book helped a little, and this just added to the learning experience :)
This was really super helpful!! Thank you. :D That 'through the fence' shot is *really* cool!
wow, what a great way to illustrate a composition! I noticed that by positioning all elements differently you get a different message
I think I have hard time knowing when the composition is working, especially when I spend long time tweaking things. This was a great video, helps me appreciate some of my own compositions!
Wow well explained, very very very nice
Another good thing to look up, in addition to the Golden Ratio, is the Rule of Thirds. It primarily applies to film, but with this sort of Landscape layout of the panel, it would definitely apply. Adding the fence, illustrates that point, as it broke the panel up into horizontal and vertical 3rds.
I really love this style of teaching
Playing around w composition like that is really smart! It's very Thinking Outside The Box-y i think it's a good way to play around with different aspects of what you want to convey! Anyway i thought that was cool
This is a cool art concept in itself, I could imagine telling a story this way.
Interesting approach of showing different ways of coming up with a composition of the same scene! It can be never ending with ideas I guess, but I enjoyed how u approached the ideas in this video :D
WIth all the digital stuff nowadays it's soo nice to see some analog stuff. Pretty nice video I hope that there will be more like that.
Love it!
A great way to show what you're talking about.
Love all you're videos where you talk about the "how to's"
Whenever he put the fence on the paper, what the picture looked like made me think the picture's story is that the cowboy is tired of his life on the ranch (for whatever reason, idk) so he's leaving to just go wherever with his horse.
5 stars man, hope to see more content like this. :)
This was very helpful... your method of sharing the info made it so clear. Thank you.
I LOVE this style of learning! It makes these technical lessons feel very tangible and will definitely help me with my compositions!
Really enjoyed the lesson on composition
This is really cool. Each example I thought was good and better than the last. Just as I thought they couldn't get better, you brought in the fence.
That was really useful to see it in real time as you moved the things around. Great!
Thanks for explaining, Mark!! I understood! Could you create more videos like this one?
This was very interesting and useful. I always struggle to decide what position to put things in in a picture. I like the idea of putting something in the extreme foreground - good call.
I wonder if anyone else noticed that the smallest cactus looked like it had a little face drawn on it 😂
Mark i love the cut out idea youve taught me so much thank u
This reminds me of the Colorforms my sisters used to play with back in the 70's.
You hit the Nail on the head for this video! Thanx!$😊
I love the approach you took to explain this topic
I really needed this video. As I'm working through my web comic, I find it harder and harder to figure out the right composition for my scenes and as I progress they just seem to getting more crowded than what I initially intended. Thank you for these very clear and easy to understand explanations. Sadly, these are topics that my university classes skip right over, so it's always helpful to have other resources to turn to.
👍
I was wondering, Mark, if you could talk a bit about composition as it relates to a script or storytelling? I would say this was something somewhat technical, but what if you want to set the scene, or convey a character's (in this case a cowboy's) feelings of solitude? Or of being overwhelmed? Or being dead, like in Shane?
Also, is there a difference in accomplishing some of the above goals in changing the framing? What I mean is, would an extreme vertical framing convey a different feeling?
Very cool way to explain these concepts with the cutouts. You could make a neat stop motion animation with these
This was an amazing approach and now all I want is to move cut out drawn elements on different backgrounds!
I am taking an acrylic painting class atm and we are completely immersed in the golden ratio - the teacher, who I actually really like and who knows her stuff is adamant that any composition we do lines up with tgr and it always turns out pretty good, but it also feels really restrictive atm, so it was so good to stretch a little, because I am really more into instinctive composition myself! Aaaah! Thank you!!
Great video. I am a abstract collage artist and I am always struggling with with composition.
I loved the fence. I would love to see a video just on creating drama with diagonal lines.. and better yet, when it does NOT work.
Nice! Insightful information.
I also thought of putting the sun at the upper left corner of the frame at 12:40
Awesome Video Crilley! Using the cut outs was an awesome idea & I love the fence!! :-)
BRILLIANT PRESENTATION!!!
I've been plotting out a mini-comic and these sorts of tips are really helpful.
I didn't realize this before, but some of the more awkward compositions could be used in a comic sense. Like the empty space at 6:33 being one panel and the next being a duplicate but with a shadow creature materializing in that space making the self correction a different type of visual satisfaction.
I do think about the composition before I draw my landscape drawing as well. But since I have a background of photographing landscapes. Rule of third helps me to create landscape I want as well.
This was a wonderful video, easy to digest and understand! I think the cutouts help a lot, also maybe because I am the "learning-by-doing" type and seeing the different layers/elements actually physically being touched and moved around on the background really helped me to understand how it all comes together. Thank you!
Loved the approach and the video !
Cut outs! So smart...
Did anyone notice how the little dots on the small cactus look like a human face? It's a small happy human-cacti ^^ Great video as always!
thanks ...the concept is easy to understand ...
Great vid! Very useful! More on composition, pls!
Wow, such a informative video for people who want to learn drawing 👍👍👏👏👏
Mark: Mentions the golden ratio with a cowboy on screen
Me: Is that a fricking Jojo reference?
Indeed so
Are you perhaps talking about the Entire Stallion?
wahhaj musthafa the whole horse is good, but he’s referring to part 7.
Awesome. Very informative and helpful. Thank you.
I think, the position of the man on horseback implies a story. If he is more on the right side, he's arriving on the scene, more on the left side, he's leaving, put him in the center something should be indicated that's going to happen, like the horse's head is up, the hind legs firmly on the ground, the horse looks tired or sweaty, the man is about to get off. If in the center, the horse's head is up high, the man holds the reins and turns toward the horse, he's about to mount and get away. - The directions right, left depend on in which direction the center of attention is moving. Have a mirror image of the man, switch right and left. I think your idea of creating "masks" of the elements you want to include makes deciding which is the composition of your choice easier.
Composition still scares me, to the point that I subconsciously avoid complicated backgrounds or too many objects in a drawing in order to not having to "compose" :'D But I've started to make little crude thumbnail sketches of what I have in mind before I start committing, like you mentioned at the beginning - it helps a lot by taking away that doubt of "What if I commit to this and after two hours I don't like the placement of this character anymore?" Great video, Mark, very nicely visualized!
(But I wish you ended it with a what-the-hell-composition with cactus-clouds, sun in front of the fence and the horse upside down :P)
I dont know about other artists, but it's pretty instinctual at this point. I think that if you've drawn many times, that's what happens. Like cooking. After a while, you don't need to measure anything.
Very helpful as usual! Thanks Mark! 👍
Love your idea of using cut outs! I'm going to try it! Thanks, Mark! ^_^
This is very helpful, Thank you!
Old man cowboy breaks into the frame ...Ooo boy 😁
I don't know if I'll ever start to draw "seriously", but I enjoyed watching the video. My imagination started to work, and I saw myself in the scene.
I noticed that I have my own preferences, but I haven't explored them yet. One thing for sure, I usually draw moving objects to move towards the centre. It's like the start of a scene. If the object moves out, that feels like the end.
And I never write endings to my stories. 😆
There are no laws in composition, but there certainly are rules. You can break them, but breaking them always leaves a question, and unless that question is answered, the image will look unfinished.
Great video! Very informative for beginners like me.
You're so extra Mark. I love you.
"But I suppose... It's time for me to lay down this Cactus." Hahaha! XD //Dying
This was really helpful, Mark! Thank you so much!
Loved the way you taught this
I have done cutouts before to know whether I should add things in. it's a useful way to check
What you say at 7:33 is super important. If you want to make the audience uncomfortable for a particular reason, compositions like that can work really well
Loved this video. Thanks
This was very helpful thanks 😊
Great idea,Mark!
This genius simple, this technique is also perfectly for shotlists
I think we need to distinguish between composition of a stand-alone piece and a frame in a comic. The latter needs to take into consideration the purpose of the frame which will put constraints on the composition. E.g., do you already have key elements you don't have much choice about, e.g., you've already shown certain important elements in previous frames so you don't have as much choice about them, or you want to elicit or portray specific emotions such as loneliness, departure, conflict, loyalty, shame, etc. based on where you are in the story.
Fantastic! I'd love to see a follow-up about tangents, unless you've already covered that subject somewhere?
Can u do a video how to draw propostion like a body on every position?