A few weeks ago as a homework assignment, my teacher suggested we take one of our photos which did not have good composition and try to rearrange some areas to improve the composition. I chose a photo which represented a place i wanted to remember from a trip we had taken. I took the photo without giving too much thought to the composition and so thought maybe i could fix this one up before trying to paint it.

I didn’t like the big open space in the middle of the photo. So i started with moving some rocks and trees around. That didn’t work too well. so i moved on to changing a number of other variables. None of these efforts gave me a good outcome. Bottom line is, as teacher has preached: you need to know before you start what your composition is supposed to be. Fixing it, even with oils which are very forgiving, often just makes things worse.

The latest effort is the photo just above. Somewhere along the path of this experiment i decided i would just play with some design and color properties and in the process see if i could end up with something that would work as a little painting. Crabapple trees are in bloom in CO and i thought maybe they would add some cheer. (They added too much cheer.) I may go back in and fix some of the brightness/shadow issues, but on the other hand, i think this project has maybe had its day.