Hi everyone,
I started a composition in charcoal, the idea- enduring the difficulty of an impossible balance in life…
My main problem is that the composition (being quite minimalist) seems extremely dull to me.
I tried breaking this up by introducing the diagonal in the background, which helped, but it still isn’t enough to make the composition more dynamic or making the objects pop a bit…
What would you suggest?
Why do you think it is boring Stella? What is it about the way these subjects are arranged that seems boring to you?
(I do like it BTW!)
First of all thank you for the kindness in the parentheses 
The main reasons I find the composition boring is because:
Identifying the problems verbally brings ideas for next minimalist projects (for example avoiding the empty background by using a drape with folds or something with interesting texture), but unfortunately I still haven’t thought of ideas for this one…
Stella,
I would argue that, while there is some symmetry, the L and R sides of the knife are different, introducing a bit of asymmetry as well.
If you want more visual variation in the painting, I would say it could be enhanced through the surface features/texture difference between the knife and the egg. As metal, even brushed metal, the knife will likely appear smoother, have some sharper edges and reflections, perhaps a smooth gradient across it, and perhaps some areas of strong contrast. The egg, on the other hand, will have an “eggshell” texture (sorry, I couldn’t pass it up), that is less smooth, and the shadow edges will be softer.
For visual interest, it might be interesting to make the knife more neutral or cooler colored, and the egg warmer, especially given that the knife represents harsh things due to imbalance, while the egg represents the frail person having to keep it all in balance for safety… I just saw that this is a charcoal piece, but if you wanted, you could subtly introduce a faint “wash” of sepia (or some warm color from a pastel pencil) mixed in with the egg values just to introduce a subtle color shift.
Just some ideas.
I hope they help!
Neat idea and execution.
My thought is: this composition is like an exclamation mark. You can’t go around it, it does not allow drifting around it, or escaping. I doubt if you should do anything to change this by adding other factors to make it less direct. I like the clarity of this composition as it does not compromise. I feel it is strong in its minimalistic set-up.
My suggestion: do not change the composition itself.
Here’s my $0.02:
I don’t find it a boring composition. I find it to be a stable composition, which - given the precarious nature of the objects - makes a powerful and interesting statement.
The one thing I would experiment if this were in my studio would be the uniformity of space bordering the objects. I’d start by decreasing (or increasing) the space to the right and left and judge the effects from there.
Good job - I like it.
I find it a very dynamic composition. It is not boring due to the tension in the subject matter. The angles of the knife’s form add to the asymmetrical distraction from it being centred and add to the dynamism of it. It works. I like it.
Hi Stella!
First of all I apologize for my delay in returning to this post. I have been tied up with a time-sensitive commission and am just no returning to a number of posts here.
Second, I am glad to read that you realized the importance of a structured self-diagnosis. After each week of painting on a new piece, I sit down to write a new “checklist” of things that might benefit from additional attention or outright change. It is a very beneficial practice for me.
Addressing your main issues in order:
“There isn’t a flow as one might find in a composition with multiple objects (what some refer to as “leading the eye” from one object to another).
Personally I think the objects work very well together. “Leading the eye” is an interesting concept. Our eye often moves to whichever region may provide the most useful information for the viewer (independent of context—this is usually the region of greatest contrasts.) One rabbit hole to avoid is the idea that our eyes follow lines and edges. Our vision just does not work that way.
(changes in contrast can significantly influence where a viewer might look)
There are several horizontal lines and one big vertical which create a very static composition (it suits thematically but doesn’t excite the eye).
Again, what draws the eye is the promise of information. I think that some people use “static” to describe what is actually a weak prediction yield. A dynamic composition therefore, would be one that fuels a prediction of some pending event.
(Small changes here can greatly affect the prediction tasks that we engage in when viewing a picture)
Consider that massive amounts of neuronal resources in the human brain are devoted to predicting what will happen from moment to moment. This fact has led many to regard the brain as a dynamic prediction machine. Jeff Hawkins writes in his book On Intelligence: “Your brain receives patterns from the outside world, stores them as memories, and makes predictions by combining what it has seen before and what is happening now… Prediction is not just one of the things your brain does. It is the primary function of the neo-cortex [sic], and the foundation of intelligence.” More to our point here, David Rock, author of Your Brain at Work, writes: "You don’t just hear; you hear and predict what should come next. You don’t just see; you predict what you should be seeing moment to moment.” With this in mind, you can see how an individual may prefer (or find comfort in) those compositions that provide enough information so as to facilitate predictions about what will happen in the moments following the one captured in the frozen percept surrogate.
Having something centered is not necessarily boring—but we often find such placements comfortable as it aligns with our efforts to center objects of interest to again maximize the amount of visual information that we can acquire. (The center of our visual field is the region of greatest visual acuity.) However, having something off-center may add drama or tension as it contrasts our impulse to have things “centered” and may influence our prediction tasks by diminishing our ability to see anything “pending” from a particular side of the image.
The objects themselves don’t have a very exciting texture that might create interest.
Texture can indeed add interest—especially is that texture is carrying additional contrast along with it.
There is symmetry that makes both sides equal, which isn’t intriguing, but I feel that having one side different would make it a focal point stealing from the main idea.
This is the balance that we all fuss with—reconciling a concept with the way most if us engage with an image. Still in all—It think you created a nice piece here.
There are quite big spaces with nothing in them.
Sure—but there are a number of very successful works that have big empty spaces. It is the context of the piece, how the surround (negative spaces, affordance spaces) may influence our perception of a subject, as well as the “problem” facing the viewer (what a viewer may be “looking for”).
I hope that some of these thoughts help for the future Stella~~~
Hi everyone!
Sorry for being gone for so much time and not thanking everyone right away for their valuable input and the help you offered!
Bert van der Laan- what a clever observation that the arangement looks like an exclamation mark! Can you believe I didn’t see that before you said it?! That’s why I love this forum 
I read everyone’s comments and thought how and where to apply your suggestions, meanwhile I have a progression shot of added detail in the knife and a slight change in the backgroud (the dots on the knife give me a real hard time to render…)
Looks awesome Stella!!! <3
Anthony- I couldn’t thank you enough for your comment here!!!
Not only has it given me lots of new information to think about, but also the examples really drove home some concepts I didn’t quite understand in the primer on composition…
I found the examples with “the prediction of a future event” quite engaging, and it ties to the suggestion JeffreyHayes gave me here to play with spacing.
I will definetly take it into consideration with my next project, I feel with this one I wanted to stress the endurance of balance, so breaking that balance would change the message…
I often find quite a tension between creating visually engaging compositions and telling a certain story, hopefully next time I’ll be able to marry the two together…
Dear Stella,
I, too, admire your work. 
I’ve recently been researching deliberate practice techniques for composition… this one by Paul Foxton is sitting at the fore-most bits of my brain. Perhaps you may find something in it useful?
Happy Sunday,
Sha
Thank you so much Sha!
It looks like a very interesting exercise to try out!
If you find more techniques for composition could you share them too? it’s such a vast and complicated field to study…
My pleasure Stella! Again—a wonderful work to be sure~~~ 
I’ve been thinking about the concepts we discussed in this thread and been doing some more experiments with centered composition, thought I could share it to have further the discussion…
So the first one is a bowl.
I used the suggestion of the cracked egg (object with detail) to see if that could add excitement to the composition. Although it was really interesting to paint I think formally speaking it wasn’t quite a step up from the last one.
After the bowl painting I thought of playing with the background to create a sort of flow…
The high chroma of the pumpkin and the drapery just hit me on the head and I really didn’t like it 
So the next day I had to repaint the background- I was looking for something with lesser chroma and cooler in hue, so I tried using a mirror to create a focus on the pumpkin.
The last painting has several things that I wanted to explore in terms of creating an exciting centered composition- “pop” of color, “promise of information” in the reflection and predictability in terms of not having the whole pumpkin reflected.
Still, I feel that there are concrete laws when it comes to value order or reflections or even how to apply paint, but I can’t say anything concrete about why I like or dislike a composition, which makes it quite difficult to mindfully create one… 
I would love to hear your thoughts on the topic, suggested reading and exercises would be very appreciated 
First Stella, I would like to state that the bowl is VERY well painted. Centered compositions tend to appeal to both a fluency and an ecology bias (we like things centered as the center of our vision (foveal region) has the highest acuity for gathering visual information. We even have certain neurons organized in the motor cortex in a manner to effectively bring held objects right to the center of our visual field. Once you drift from the center, tension increases as the aforementioned biases are snubbed.
Just wanted to add these two wonderful examples of simple and centered composition. I think they are exquisite. The left is Still life with a bowl by Olav Cleofas van Overbeek and Big bowl III by Volkert Olij (both Dutch). I don’t know what is going on with the Dutch but they sure can paint a good piece of plateware.
I think the pumpkin is successful as well. The first go really reminded me of the works that come out of Studio Incamminati. They really push high chroma exaggeration and I think it is an impressive feat in and of itself just to demonstrate such good control with so much chroma “in the mix.”
As to your statement, “Still, I feel that there are concrete laws when it comes to value order or reflections or even how to apply paint, but I can’t say anything concrete about why I like or dislike a composition, which makes it quite difficult to mindfully create one….”
Can you expand on this a bit? Let’s try to suss out the confusion here and see if we can help uncover some concrete answers for you. I would enjoy the exercise if you would!
