Use your freedom: Part 4:

How to compose a good landscape

You can glean a great deal about excellence in composition by visiting a good art gallery and studying the work of old masters. The trick, once you have absorbed what you will - having stood in front of a particular masterpiece - is to remember what your eye first saw and then, how you looked around the rest of the painting.

Next think what had the artist done to make your eye move the way it did? What you discover will give you ideas for your own creations.The landscape sketch I have shown in Figure 1 is very similar in faults to the illustration I shown in my previous lesson (Part 3). The present figure (1) shows the man and his dog are moving out of the frame. The lane is running off at the edge. One tree dominates the middle of the scene whilst only half of another tree tries to get into the act. The re-drawn example on the bottom has a winding lane.

Its previously uniform fence is now broken down and more interesting. You will observe opposite this fence is now a straggly hedge to add balance. The figures move into the set. The trees have been rearranged and the horizon has been brought down slightly.

A question to be asked - why is your eye-level important? The answer is your eye-level should determine where your horizon is.

Next - what should figures in a landscape be doing? They should be moving into the picture, or be an integral part of the design. By studying and practising these illustrations you should be able to compose a good landscape picture.