McGraw Hill

It's been a while since my last post...I had a little change of venue with my studio in November of this year. This is one of the paintings I did during that time, it is based purely on a doodle that I must have done some time this year. I confess the title is not very original I took it from the name of a book publisher that I had jotted down on the same note page where the doodle was. I often do this, come up with the painting title based on some of the actual notes (e.g. Immortal Time Infinite Ideas), although usually it is more clever than this. This painting kind of reminds me of an old paitning I did called "Midnight on Chocolate Harbour", it also has a kind of 'Survivor' feel to it... that TV show.

I probably don't talk enough about composition... it is by far the most important thing in any media... oil, acrylic, ink, computer art, or even any genre whether it be painting, sculpting, maybe music even. What is composition? Composition has to do with where the objects in a picture are placed, and how everything fits together.  In this painting there are several objects, the torch, the tree/orbs, the swirling city, the sky.... and I'd like to think they have been tastefully arranged to complement each other, and to create a sense of depth. Imagine all of thise objects were just crammed together or stuck at the bottom of the picture... then it would be ugly. There are more subtle things, maybe rules, I have found work for me...like don't let the edge of any object touch the side of the painting. Notice how there is a little sliver of space between the egg on the bottom right and the edge of the painting which makes it feel more comfortably placed in the picture,

cold press 7.5 x 6" Nov 2012