Composition Note 12 – Size and Proportion

(Studying Composition means Learning Painting. There are no other ways to learn painting than understanding composition. I have come to a conclusion that it can be explained through 200 compositional studies. I am planning to post 200 composition studies in the next 300 days)

I will tell one incident which happened in my class room. One of my student was copying a drawing. She was little bit confident about her ability to draw. After one hour, in middle of drawing, she understood something had gone wrong. And she also understood, where it had gone wrong.

She drew one of the shapes in the picture, a little bit big than its normal size. So all connected parts with that particular part gone wrong in their proportions. She lost. I told her again, what I said previously to her…’’ Don’t draw. Look at it. Judge heights and widths and their relations. It will come.’’

She had started to work again. This time she began to see their heights, widths and their relations, instead of seeing the picture. Then she got it.

I asked her..” What happened In your mind in the first and second attempts? ”

She told me that in her first attempt she concentrated on the picture … how to copy it? In her second attempt, she did not bother about the copying the picture. She concentrated only on heights and widths of the shapes and their relations. This was what she said.

To learn art, start with Drawing. To draw you require good observation skills.

Observation is the key to drawing. That is … ”Learning to see ”

From there, start your journey. See every thing as a shape. There are so many small and smaller shapes in those shapes. See the relation between those shapes. That kind of study will help you to understand …’ Size and Proportions.’

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