The Secret of Oil Painting - Learn How to Make Good Pictures Or How to Make Good Pictures Better
By Barry Waldman

Technique is not the secret of painting. It's not using tissues, toothbrushes, sponges, palette knives, cotton swabs or razor blades along with your artist paint brushes. Nor is it about "put a little blue here." All of these have a place in our bag of drawing and painting tricks ... but the real secret of picture making is composition.

Underlying all works of art (at all levels from good amateur level to great pictures) is structure.

On the first day in my English Literature class in my art university, the professor played "Bolero," an orchestral work by Maurice Ravel and asked us what it was. The whole class squirmed and could not come up with an answer. Our professor finally said "it's a crescendo." That was the underlying structure. That was the idea. That was the organizing theme. Aside from Ravel having skills in melody and musicality, he was a composer.

Listeners like what they hear in "Bolero." Some listeners have music training and understand on all levels, including understanding the underlying structure. Untrained listeners like what they hear and while they may not know it they like "Bolero" because it is composed. That's why it is performed over and over in symphony halls. That's why a ballet was created to dance to the gradual increase in volume and intensity up to the thunderous climax that ends "Bolero." My English Professor taught me about composition in art using "Bolero" as an example.

Paintings have underlying principles that organize the elements of the picture in order to bring the eye of the viewer into and around the image in an interesting way and to organize the elements into a cohesive whole.

There are nearly infinite ways to structure a picture. Some are obvious, like a mother arching over and protecting a resting or sleeping horizontal child. Another obvious composition is the opposing angles of two fighters in a boxing match.

Some of the principles of composition:

• Beauty is organized variety.
• Variety equals interest.
• A picture needs a dominant element, a sub-dominant element and subordinate elements organized into interesting relationships. This creates order for the viewer so that you, the painter, can entertain the eye of the viewer with a varied and therefore interesting picture order.
• The dominant element can be made dominant by a somewhat central position, by size dominance or interest dominance, and through the complexity of the dominant element or its psychological dominance. For instance, the eye of a viewer is drawn to a human face.
• Those elements need to be varied in size and shape for maximum interest.
• The viewer needs to have a path to those elements that is interesting.
• Thumbnails ... small sketches ... can organize your picture before you get into the details.
• The negative areas (spaces between objects) are as important as the objects.
• The center of the picture is the most powerful ... not the exact center ... but the area around the center is where your dominant element gains strength.
• Tension between two elements adds interest (like the opposition thrust of the fighters mentioned above).
• Division horizontally suggests peacefulness.
• Those divisions should not be equal as that would create a boring picture.
• In a painting of a sky, mountain range and valley let's say you want the sky to dominate. You would make the sky ½ the height of the canvas (3/6ths). But a linear (3-2-1) stacking would be boring. 3-1-2 is more interesting. So sky 3, mountain range 1 and foreground valley 2.

Art courses, classes, videos and TV shows that teach technique but don't address composition miss the key to making good pictures.

To be sure, an understanding of technique, color theory, form, drawing, perspective and proportion need to be studied and developed but they should serve on an underlying structure.

Composition is the secret of painting.

The author has painted and taught for 50 years and has had over 30 art exhibits of his paintings. My USA based online art school has students in 19 countries. I have taught art classes at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and Manhattan, USA, Fairfield University in Fairfield, Connecticut, Famous Artists Schools in Westport, Connecticut, USA. I have also lectured on various art subjects all over the USA and in Holland, Belgium, France, South Africa and Australia.