Drawing Lessons: Drawing Composition with Mike Theuer

Learn how to compose your drawings and add balance to your compositions in this entry into Mike Theuer’s drawing lessons series.

Drawing Lessons: Composition

First, remember to focus on a subject or aspect of a subject that you like. Maybe you like the look of an entire table or just the knotted grain. Whatever your focus, be sure to place that prominently on your paper. And then imagine your 2D object has weight like its 3D counterpart does in reality. And imagine that color and shadow have weight too. White space is weightless.

Unbalanced

Compositions can be unbalanced. For example, if you drew a table in the bottom left corner of a piece of paper, its weight would appear to drag that corner down. If you then stuck a pin in the center of this drawing and stuck it to the wall, the table would pull on the paper so much the paper would spin and wind up pointing table down. And then if you spun the paper like a pinwheel, it would wobble.

Unbalanced compositions are used to express good and bad strong feelings. Your table, for example, looks lonely.

Balanced

Compositions can be balanced. For example, if you added a patch of shading gradation to the right of your drawing from the previous example, your drawing would appear to even out. If you then spun your drawing on a pin like above, it would spin evenly and even wind up level when it stopped spinning.
Balanced compositions are used to express comfortable feelings. Now your table looks at home.

EXERCISE – Look at a group of objects like leaves on a tree or bricks in a wall, in real life or in a photo. Focus on only a few of the objects that catch your eye, ones that you like. Draw them prominently on your paper in either a balanced or an unbalanced composition. Try following the shading rules described in the “shading” lesson.

If you want to see more drawing lessons, including more drawing lessons from Mike Theuer, check out the “Drawing Lessons” section of Studio 602.