NathanP

Geometric Guerilla

The Indomitable (Spring 2022)

Joined 3 years ago

5625 Reputation

nathanp's Sketchbook

  • The Resilient (Summer 2022)
  • The Indomitable (Spring 2022)
  • Sharing the Knowledge
  • Geometric Guerilla
  • Tamer of Beasts
  • The Fearless
  • Giver of Life
  • Dimensional Dominator
  • The Relentless
  • Basics Brawler
  • Fishlev - 2022 Winter Promptathon: Day 2

  • Here, Kitty Kitty - 2022 Winter Promptathon: Day 1

  • 250 Cylinder Challenge

  • Lesson 5: Applying Construction to Animals

  • Lesson 4: Applying Construction to Insects and Arachnids

  • Lesson 3: Applying Construction to Plants

  • Lesson 2: Contour Lines, Texture and Construction

  • QUESTION for Lesson 2, Form Intersections Exercise: CAN I HAVE TOO MANY FORMS?

  • Lessons Learned from Conquering the Beast That Is the Dissections Exercise!

  • Drawabox Fineliners: Free Shipping to Canada?

  • Drawing Prompt: Fantasy Ice Cream Cart

  • Drawing Prompt: Family Life

  • Drawing Prompt: Lost in the Multiverse

  • Drawing Prompt: Everything, a Dragon

  • Drawing Prompt: Bathroom Spacecraft

  • Severe Struggles with Lesson 2 Dissections. Help!

  • Thank you, New Masters Academy!

  • Drawing Prompt: Junkyard Symphony

  • Drawing Prompt: The Court of the Rat King

  • Drawing Prompt: Decanter of Drowning

The recommendation below is an advertisement. Most of the links here are part of Amazon's affiliate program (unless otherwise stated), which helps support this website. It's also more than that - it's a hand-picked recommendation of something we've used ourselves, or know to be of impeccable quality. If you're interested, here is a full list.
Framed Ink

Framed Ink

I'd been drawing as a hobby for a solid 10 years at least before I finally had the concept of composition explained to me by a friend.

Unlike the spatial reasoning we delve into here, where it's all about understanding the relationships between things in three dimensions, composition is all about understanding what you're drawing as it exists in two dimensions. It's about the silhouettes that are used to represent objects, without concern for what those objects are. It's all just shapes, how those shapes balance against one another, and how their arrangement encourages the viewer's eye to follow a specific path. When it comes to illustration, composition is extremely important, and coming to understand it fundamentally changed how I approached my own work.

Marcos Mateu-Mestre's Framed Ink is among the best books out there on explaining composition, and how to think through the way in which you lay out your work.

Illustration is, at its core, storytelling, and understanding composition will arm you with the tools you'll need to tell stories that occur across a span of time, within the confines of a single frame.

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