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I usually have an immediate recognition of the potential image, and I have found that too much concern about matters such as conventional composition may take the edge off the first inclusive reaction. (Ansel Adams)
Before you compose your picture it's a good idea to ask yourself why you're doing it. (Anonymous)
The anatomy of the picture is always more important than the anatomy of the subject. (Marc Awodey)
I find a single focus in the scene and then play everything off that one thing. (Kenn Backhaus)
A painting that is well composed is half finished. (Rohan Baikar)
A law of composition: If it does not fit do not force it; it is not for it. (Jack Bartholomew)
When working on several images based on the same subject or perhaps all derived from an earlier painting, composition becomes one of the most important personal choices. (Mary Bassi)
Developing a composition is a creative process involving intuition and thinking more than following rules. (Alessandra Bitelli)
Does it feel like the elements in the painting's composition belong together, or are they separate bits that just happen to be in the same painting? (Marion Boddy-Evans)
And after drawing comes composition. A well-composed painting is half done. (Pierre Bonnard)
I am interposing overlaid planes a short way off... To make it understood that things are in front of each other instead of being scattered in space. (Georges Braque)
The artist should control the flow of the composition, which means sometimes breaking the rules. (J. M. Brodrick)
It is important that the artist... understands the importance of composition, the golden mean... the universal symbols... The concept of perfect balance is an intrical part of this process, not only in the art but in our lives. (Kathleen Carrillo)
A good composition keeps things from 'floating' or 'flying' off the canvas, but a poor composition will ruin an otherwise great work of art. (Steve Childs)
Composition, an arbitrary, inexact process, appears to be guided best by intuition and chance rather than science. (Peter Ciccariello)
You compose because you want to somehow summarize in some permanent form your most basic feelings about being alive, to set down... some sort of permanent statement about the way it feels to live now, today. (Aaron Copland)
Even in front of nature one must compose. (Edgar Degas)
I have found in my still-life work that I seem to be able to tell what objects are important to me by what tends to stay in the painting as it develops. (Richard Diebenkorn)
The interaction of layering with scribing and drawing transforms random color into structured composition. (Gerry Dudgeon)
When you feel like putting something into your picture or do not know what is the matter with it, take something out. (Harvey Dunn)
The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first. (T. S. Eliot)
My kind of composing is more like the work of a gardener. The gardener takes his seeds and scatters them, knowing what he is planting but not quite what will grow where and when - and he won't necessarily be able to reproduce it again afterwards either. (Brian Eno)
The difficulties in drawing the figure – that is, manipulating and using the figure in a composition – are enormous. (Martha Mayer Erlebacher)
A precision of composition and figuration is what I'm working toward. I've always felt viewers should have an experience without having to ask what the hell is was about. (Eric Fischl)
One compositional element suggests and asks for another. This is what makes the activity interesting. (Robert Genn)
Watch the greater image materialize. You need that thing over there to tell you what to do about that thing over here. (Robert Genn)
A curiosity prompt heightens the senses and hones compositional ability... (Robert Genn)
With cropping, a new integrity appears and winning abstractions flutter up like butterflies. You can afford to be critical, discriminating, innocent, open-minded, charmed, beguiled or bamboozled. (Robert Genn)
Such compositions, line and color ideas, such wonders come into my mind and have stuck! – They will this time be dismissed only by being painted out... (Morris Graves)
Composing a picture, do many thumbnails, rejecting the obvious ones. (Irwin Greenberg)
By having the big lines of the composition going out of the canvas, your imagination can wander beyond the edge. It will make it seem part of a large composition. (Charles Hawthorne)
All you need to do is walk away from your painting several feet, turn around and look. This... will keep you looking at the entire composition all the way through the process. (Sandra Taylor Hedges)
Good composition is like a suspension bridge; each line adds strength and takes none away... Making lines run into each other is not composition. There must be motive for the connection. Get the art of controlling the observer – that is composition. (Robert Henri)
As a rule, someone who has difficulty with painting in any medium is not prepared to believe that the real trouble is ignorance of drawing and composition. (William Herring)
When I paint a landscape, I get the greatest pleasure out of composing it. As I paint, I try to work out a visual sonata form or a fugue, with realistic images. (Ian Hornak)
As in construction, correct support is a priority. Everything must be balanced, straight, level, plumb, and square. (Marvin Humphrey)
What can I do to my composition to make it say more? There is no wrong time in the planning process to ask this question, and the creative thought can come at any moment. (Tom Huntley)
The composition is the organized sum of the interior functions of every part of the work. (Wassily Kandinsky)
I just walk around, observing the subject from various angles until the picture elements arrange themselves into a composition that pleases my eye. (Andre Kertesz)
Gradually compositions make an appearance again. Political – satirical – conceits expressed in one figure or a few. (Paul Klee)
You know, as you compose music, you're just off in your own world. You have no idea where reality is, so to have an idea of what people think is pretty hard. (Roy Lichtenstein)
A composition is an arrangement, built out of parts, that aims at seamlessness. (Eric Maisel)
Only when the habit of one's consciousness to see in paintings bits of nature, madonnas and shameless nudes... has disappeared, shall we see a pure painting composition. (Kasimir Malevich)
Composition is the art of arranging in a decorative manner the various elements which the painter uses to express his sentiments. In a picture every separate part will be visible and... everything which has no utility in the picture is for that reason harmful. (Henri Matisse)
Composition, the aim of which is expression, alters itself according to the surface to be covered. If I take a sheet of paper of given dimensions, I will jot down a drawing which will have a necessary relation to its format. (Henri Matisse)
Each work of art is a collection of signs invented during the picture's execution to suit the needs of their position. Taken out of the composition for which they were created, these signs have no further use. (Henri Matisse)
Realtors preach - 'Location, Location, Location,' while artists should preach - 'Composition, Composition, Composition.' (Doug Mays)
Sometimes the drawn image develops as the artwork progresses, with compositional choices resolved on the spot, rather than planned in advance. (Richard McDaniel)
The composition gets strengthened by adding lines that don't exist in nature. That language has much more impact than a literal painting. The beautiful 'composed' scene, which follows the invented lines, talks to us. (Tatjana Mirkov-Popovicki)
The larger the area to be painted, the harder it is to have a good composition. Conversely, small works are not easy as, the space being so limited, detail becomes important. (Alfred Muma)
I like it first to be art, so actually dividing up the canvas is one of the most exciting things for me. (Alice Neel)
The composition happens as the work progresses. Often the messy background makes it easy to disperse shapes as needed. I'd rather it took over me than I took over it. (Myfanwy Pavelic)
I try to find a compositional structure in the subject itself, in nature... I rely on the angle where the wall meets the floor as a constant reference point, and against that I oppose the movements of the model's limbs. (Philip Pearlstein)
A landscape painting in which composition is ignored is like a line taken from a poem at random: it lacks context, and may or may not make sense. (Walter J. Phillips)
There must be a judicious arrangement of all the parts. Considered conversely, the artist's task is to fill his panel with a design that conforms to its shape and is beautiful in itself. (Walter J. Phillips)
The relationships of shape, texture, and color all contribute to the creative action that gradually becomes the expressive concept. (Marilyn Hughey Phillis)
I put in my pictures everything I like. So much the worse for the things - they have to get along with one another. (Pablo Picasso)
The right use of color can make any composition work. (Fairfield Porter)
The image is more than an idea. It is a vortex or cluster of fused ideas and is endowed with energy. (Ezra Pound)
Don't waste time trying to find that perfect composition. Remember life is short, and while contemplating the wonderful texture and taste of that ice cream cone, and why you prefer one flavour over another... your ice cream cone is melting. (John Stuart Pryce)
I have learned from nature that all is equal... all is equal and in balance. I see everything as fitting together. (Joseph Raffael)
Each change in the composition makes a larger change on the rest of the painting, and if that change isn't for the good of the whole then it will be unsuccessful. (William F. Reese)
A good composition is creativity cleansed of the irrelevant. (Ian Semple)
The diagonal gives energy to a composition. To jumble and tweak the balance is my spice of preference. (Gail Siptak)
Composition is my delight, my pain, my longing, my humor, my temptation and fear expressed. When it works well, it reaches beyond myself to the viewer who relates personally, who finds their own metaphor. (Nancy Slaght)
Drawing and composition are the same thing. (John Sloan)
Everything that is placed within the enclosing borders of the picture rectangle relates in some way to everything else that is already there... some attribute must be shared between all of them. (Ted Smuskiewicz)
I love the complicated logic of a perfect composition. It is not just the shapes and lines that make one travel through a painting. It's the placement of the strongest colors, the sharpest lines, and the dominant shapes. (Kathryn Stats)
When I begin a composition, I try to clearly understand the idea behind the subject... my subconscious tends to reinforce the idea by complementing and contrasting colours in patterns around the subject, leading mind and vision to the centre of the composition. (Ken Strong)
When we look at a painting, listen to a piece of music, read a novel, or watch a movie we are taking in the artist's composition. The composition is the totality of the work. (Mike Svob)
The first process in the art of the painter is the composition of colours. (Theophilus)
The foreground is like the door to the composition, so it should have the biggest value and color temperature contrasts and the highest intensities to invite viewers in. The middle-ground contains the important things the viewer came for, so it should be more subtle, like a pleasant conversation going on in the main room of the house. Finally, the background is like the walls of the house, supporting the middle-ground, so it should possess little contrast or intensity. (Aleksander Titovets)
Painting is still to a great extent dominated by a central image; corners in most cases are like uninvited guests at a party, uneasy and unattended. (Harold Town)
A painting is a series of large flat planes of color first, and then break up the planes, fitting the pieces together in a composition. (Van Waldron)
What good is a balanced composition if the painting doesn't sing with life's energy and spirit? (Marney Ward)
Composition is the gravity that holds a painting together. (Frank Webb)
To compose a subject well means no more than to see and present it in the strongest manner possible. (Edward Weston)
The more composed scenes are like elevator music compared to some of the more dynamic styles of music. One is not better than the other. They both deserve their spots in the world. (Jean Wilson)
If yer miserable bein' miserable... tough! Paint it! If it's whining you need to describe y'self in terms of style... you've already screwed up by buying into the dream machine. (Jan Zawadzki)
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