Fastest way to make your drawing better? Composition 💫 

I'm also studying Russian academic drawing. And you are explaining things I'm not getting from the program. I saw one funny video where a student at their academy was drawing a large figure, and the instructor came up and smeared out the details in the legs. I was rather shocked! But it actually improved the drawing. The student even acknowledged that it had 'fixed' her drawing. Incredible! Now I get it.

Thanks Stephen. I started a pencil portrait today and was thinking about what information to leave out. Good timing and your video helped my thought process.

i like your drawing to me it is very fine work.

Amazing information, thank you

What a great video man ! Explained so well

Well this is embarrassing. After a long commercial art career I have finally retired and now I’m going to work on improving my important skills. And what I just heard and saw in this short video has pulled the rug out from under me - but kind of replaced it with a magic carpet. WHAT?!? I can modify my shadows and even leave things out? Is that even LEGAL? My brain has seized!

Oh wow I thank for your idea

Hi Stephen, great video! Is some of the Russian artist techniques something we can implement in our drawings when we are intermediate at drawing or do you think this should be something more advanced level will be able to better handle?

Hi,there are many different proportions for drawing a skull, and each artist has his own proportion. Is all of them wrong and one is correct?Can I invent my own proportions to draw a skull or animals

Hi👋 I am a beginner and struggle a lot to make the outline accurate So would it be wrong if I use grid method ( smaller to bigger to freehand) to draw out lines?

There are no "rules" in art. There are REALITIES, however: if I do this, this will be the result; if I do that, that will be the result. For example, one should know that the viewer's attention will go immediately to the area of greatest contrast closest to the centre, following which, the eye has a tendency to rise, unless stopped (and there are ways to stop both these things). The artist has to know the elements of composition so that he/she can exploit them for expression-it's not a matter of "breaking rules." I point out to my students at the Angel Academy of Art, Florence, that music is the most abstract of the arts (it is virtually mathematical) and yet is the most emotionally moving of them all (once the musician knows the vast amount of music theory and knows how to manipulate it). If one want to give a pushed-against-the-wall feeling to one's head, put the face closer to the edge of the frame; if one doesn't want this to happen, don't put it there.

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To discuss composition with drawing one head is too limited. Composition can have more than two people, and many more objects, and the people's position, etc. I'd rather say ust drawing ONE person is not a composition. Real artists do real composotions, and stories and meanings come out of them.

Very instructive. It helps me a lot reflect on some choices I make with my paintings. Thanks

Extremely helpful video. Robert Beverly Hale said that it's really hard to convince a beginner that cast shadows could be really detrimental to a drawing. The way he said it tho made me feel like i should avoid drawing cast shadows completely which didn't make sense to me since it can help define volume. But what you said makes so much sense. If it DOESN'T help, you can leave it out. 👍

Your beard!?!? 😜

I wasn't prepared for an A.S. Roma's shirt from the eighties, daje maggica.

I consider myself an ok artist but my weak point has always been composition 😢 I just don't "get it", it never clicks, no matter how many in depth tutorials I watch about it. However, I think your video is very well explained, better than 90% of other videos about it. Thank you.

easy subscribe for the roma jersey 😂🐺

This is good teaching!

Stephen! Do a video about Bernard Julien technique. People needs this to know.

I am taking life notes ❤ we are the director 😊 I am collecting wisdom from everywhere. Love your video

I’ve always used this classical technique just using curved gestural lines

Very good. Thanks for posting.

i want to know the secret of how you control your heard

Where can I get the reference photo?

Lovely and informative video as always!!! Looking forward to live streams!!

Where do u find high quality references

Thank you...best wishes

I've always been a huge fan of the Russian school of drawing and painting. I might have a bit of a bias being from Moldova.

Another great video, maestro!!! Thanks, as always. Carolus Duran not withstanding, the three great principles in painting are simplify, simplify, and simplify (he said they are Velásquez, Velásquez and Velásquez). Should anybody care, I'm not fond of the contemporary Russians' drawings: to my eye, they swamp the big vision in a plethora of anatomical detail.

Steve . . . very good information. Back when I studied painting with Daniel Greene, he would day over and over, "Never pass up an opportunity to simplify."