Drawing Fundamentals Week 4 ~ Composition

This was the last week of drawing fundamentals that has a homework assignment. The lecture was one of the more interesting and informative so far. Thomas makes the point that an artist who has mastery of composition will have control over where the viewer's eyes moves along the image. It basically boils down to this:

Every mass has 3 properties that effect the composition entire piece.
-The first is the placement of the mass in the image. Thomas recommends the rule of thirds as a rule of thumb.
-The second is the shape of the mass. This one is a bit foggier. You breakdown the mass into silhouette and consider what the shape is asking the viewer's eye to do. Eye's tend to follow straight lines, so you need to conscious of how many shapes are pointing up or down. Too many downward shapes will make the viewer's eyes slide off the page. A shape might also lead the eye off the page.
-The third is the light dark contrast. The amount of contrast decides which shapes the viewer's eyes go to first. You also must balance the light and dark masses on you image so that it is not right or left heavy.

Thomas provided four or five image for us to put together into a composition. One was a statue, another was a park, and the rest where dogs at play. My goal was to draw anything but a dog park.

I'm not very happy with this image but I'll show it in the spirit of transparency.

The provided images.

The original idea for my image was to have Dickens in his study being pestered by dog spirits.

 

However, I thought the dogs were hurting my image more than helping it so I took them out.