I mentioned in my last post that I wanted to convert an image of my painting into greyscale in order to check the composition so far. I thought I’d share the greyscale image to illustrate what I’m looking for.
The first thing I look for is a wide range of darks and lights. The wider the range, the more impact a piece tends to have. I can see that at this point, the piece has a good range of almost-black darks, a variety of mid-tone greys, near-white and white. So far, so good.
The next thing I look for is how the eye travels around the painting. Though everyone is different, my eye enters the piece at the bottom right corner, travels to the middle left, across to the top, then loops around to the middle. From there it spots smaller details, but essentially, that’s the flow I’m seeing. I’m happy with that, because it means there’s an easy flow and plenty to look at.
The last thing I’m looking for is rest spots – places the eye can stop and rest. If there are a few places like that it means I’ve not made the piece too chaotic or busy, and that there’s plenty of variety of shapes and sizes. As I progress with the painting I’ll have to make sure I don’t obliterate those spots!