There are a lot of good tutorials out there on Youtube with tips how to improve your composition. It might have been in this video of the Draftsmen where they explain that you can learn a lot by analyzing the old masters. Their paintings did not get famous and end up in the museums for nothing- these painters knew through long years of study how to use light, movement, perspective and more in their favor! Here are a few tips I picked up through various tutorials:
- Try to keep the focus of the viewer inside the image, so avoid lines that lead the eye outside of the frame.
- Start your drawing with thumbnails, using only few values (3-4) to work out the general composition and how you want to lead the eye to the focal point, the point where you want the viewer to focus on! Only then move on to putting more details into these bigger shapes.
- Learn what types of contrast exist and how you can use them to your advantage- remember, contrast creates focus, and different contrasts do this in varying intensity.
(This Youtube video by Sam Nielson provides good info)
But it’s one thing to know the rules and another to be able to use them. Especially if there’s so many ways to do so cleverly! So one way to get a feeling for that seems to be analyzing famous paintings, detect how shapes are arranged, how colors are used, is there a clear fore- and background, etc. Look out for everything that the artist used as a tool to lead the eye of the viewer. You’ll find more than you think!
Here’s some notes of mine with their respective paintings:
“The Blinding of Samson” by Rembrandt (1636)
“Judas Repentant, Returning the Pieces of Silver” by Rembrandt (1629)
“The Dogano, San Giorgio, Citella, from the Steps of the Europa” by J. M. W. Turner (1842)