Tools for Improving Composition
7/23/23-Tools for Improving Composition (Scott Maier Artists network)
Mastering composition can be a challenge. Nothing beats repeated work and intentional practice, but these tools can be a big help! Tools like grids, proportional dividers, and the golden ratio, can help create stronger designs in your work, laying a groundwork from which you’ll discover your own approach to composition.
View Catcher
A standard tool for many artists, view finders like this help to visualize compositions when working from live. Using the slider, it assists artists in finding their preferred cropping of the subject
Great for Sketching and painting from life
Golden Ratio Finder
Use a finder like this to arrange subjects in your work according to the Golden Ratio. The transparent overlay can be used to observe the Golden Ratio in nature or in your work as the composition is developed.
Great for Painting or sketching from life.
Divided Viewfinder
Easily find the center of your composition as well as other divisions in your subject to explore the “Rule of Thirds” with this viewfinder.
Great for Applying the “rule of thirds” to your composition Drawing
Proportional Divider
Proportional dividers make great tools for composition, allowing for an easy comparison of various shapes in a work. Whether working on representational or abstract work, understanding the spatial relationships between forms is important and these tools make it easy!
Meet Our Children’s Instructor-Miss Alison Amelchenko!
Can artistic talent be embedded in DNA? If so Alison Amelchenko couldn’t have been anything other than an artist. Her father and sister and now her own son and daughter all have worked or are working in the art field. In addition, three family members are architects. Alison is a graduate of Pratt Institute, a prestigious art
school in New York. As a note of interest, her father, sister and daughter are also alumni of Pratt. A favorite family story is the time when her father was attending a lecture at school by Norman Rockwell and was able to see up close the charcoal drawings he used for the Saturday Evening Post. She is inspired by the work of Georgia O’Keeffe because “her colors and interpretation of nature is as unique and authentic as her life”. Alison works with all drawing materials plus watercolors and acrylics but uses oils on canvas in the final phase. Presently, she is creating paintings with skies and nature’s wonders as her subjects. A long time member of the OCAG, Alison, enjoys the historic building, the beautiful setting in Island Heights and the ever-changing art exhibits.
Alison is fully committed to passing down her passion and talent to the 
next generation thru her teachings at the Ocean County Artists’ Guild children’s program; she says it is her personal joy. This year- round program which Alison started when she was president of OCAG serves the local youths from age five to twelve focusing on drawing and painting with an occasional 3D project included.
Right now, Alison is ramping up for her eight-week summer arts program which starts on Monday July 10th. Classes are on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesdays. Two sessions each day at 10:30-12:00 PM […]