Depending on what you’re drawing, you’re gonna want to find your focus point. Sometimes it can be a single point, sometimes it can be multiple, and sometimes it can just be where two points come together. And a  lot of times it’s connected to shapes.

One

If you’ve studied geometry, you know that triangles are basically the basis for all shapes. It doesn’t have to be a triangle as your points though.

Take for instance this art piece that I had done:

The focus point is her face, or rather, looking “up” to her face from a downward position, and yes, there are shapes in this one as well.

 

As humans we like shapes and patterns, and as such it’s easiest to find a focal point if there are shapes involved, and the most easiest shape, and the basis for most shapes, and nature in general (no I’m not illuminati), is a triangle (it’s just simple trigonometry and math).

 

But how do you put a triangle in a bust picture (just the face, for those newbie artists)? That’s a good question, and the truth is, that’s one of the occasions that there isn’t the focus point there, even if there are still triangles.

Two

Now that I have my sketch, keeping the two triangles I had drawn before in mind, I’ve created that focus point. Where the eyes are going to be drawn to in the piece.

I’ll be honest, I don’t always draw triangles or shapes to find my focus point, but if you know where you want your point to go, it’s easiest if you rely on the basic shapes in nature to do so. Just like how I have tons of circles representing joints in the girl’s body.

Composition isn’t just about where the focus point is, but also where the lines of action are. The lines of action in my drawing are going away from my focus point. In the cat and the girl, they are going in a general downwards motion, with a curvature at the end.

Sometimes the lines of action may be straight, and sometimes they might follow those triangle shapes of the picture.

Like you might have guessed, the lines of action other than the two characters in the piece are going away from the focus point, which expands the view.

It’s like if you're taking a picture of the sunset, you don’t zoom your camera in to see just the sun, but you have it wider so you can see the whole of the sky, which draws your eyes toward where the sun is at, or the horizon line of your photograph. Drawing is the same way, sometimes you have to expand the view, or zoom out to draw attention to what is going on at the focus point.

And yet, we still have the triangles in this piece that are pointing to, and drawing attention towards that focus point, or focal point as I have it labeled in my sketches.

Three

However, like I previously said, you don’t always have to zoom out to expand the view, or to get the best composition for your piece, sometimes you need to zoom in. It all depends on the feel of the piece.

Let’s say there’s a background, and a foreground. If the flowers are in the foreground, your attention will go towards the ‘background’ typically if they are blurred as they get closer to the camera. So what’s the focus point in this case? Well, as you might have guessed, it’d be the person in the middle of the foreground andbackground.

 

I’ve drawn a number of pieces myself where the focus point isn’t the background or the foreground, and is the eyes of the person, the emotion they are feeling. For example:

Now I’ve drawn pieces before where they really are just someone's eyes, who hasn’t? (especially during math class, I see you, you and your eye masterpieces on the side of your notes) But for this piece, I wanted the composition to show that he’s looking at you. Maybe it’s because it’s supposed to be a mock poster, but your eyes are drawn to meet his eyes, before they look at the rest of the piece. It’s human nature. Are there shapes in this piece, too? Of course. The triangle shape that his arm is making against his face. The crescent shape that his shoulder and neck are making as he tilts his head.

Four

Now we should probably get back to the drawing, huh?

Well, now that I’ve established my base sketch, the next step is to finalize the sketch. For that entire process of finalizing your sketch, you're still gonna want to keep those shapes and/or focus points in mind. Sometimes they can be easy, but if you're making a more complicated art render, it’ll be a bit more difficult to obtain.

And as the piece zooms out away from the focal point, it’s always a good idea to keep dimensions and vanishing points in mind. My art piece has two vanishing points, however, it may seem like it only has one, since each vanishing point is along the two visible walls of the bedroom, which intersect each other.

Don’t rush your sketching process. Always make sure to double check, flip your canvas if you need to (personally, I should probably flip my canvas more), and erase, sketch more. Your first sketch is rarely ever your final sketch. In fact, a lot of times, it isn’t. And that’s okay for it not to be your final version. Art is a process, a journey. You’re not going to be getting it perfect on your first try. Take your time, don’t rush art (I’m talking to you AIs and AI users/defenders). Something I always try to do is to avoid tangent lines. If you saw in my original sketch there were quite a few lines that were tangents to each other, and honestly, it doesn’t look all that pretty, as much as we might like it, and as much as we like shapes. It doesn’t bring your piece to life, I mean how often are you going to take a photo and the lines just perfectly line up with each other. With this in mind, I had adjusted the lines of my closet in my final sketch so that they weren’t tangent to the head of the girl or the nose of the cat.

Five

Now for some little tips as I add lineart and flat colors, the composition of the art piece doesn’t just end with how you position your characters/objects/camera on the page.

 

For my lineart, I used the “Mapping” brush.

 

I had to adjust a few things from my final sketch, and as you can see the lineart doesn’t perfectly cover up my sketching lines. I added some extra details, and used the thickness variation (depending on how hard you press down) of the brush to give my lines weight to them. For the most part, the lines that are further away from my light source have thicker lines than the ones that are closer to my light source, but… that’s for the most part. I’m still learning the thickness variations, so if you’ve got some tips for me, I’d very much appreciate it!

When it came to my background, I added new layers so that I’d easily be able to switch between them when I’m doing my coloring.

So while it might look like all the lines are intersecting with each other,they aren’t. And as you can see after I use the paint bucket tool (selecting the layer above, mind you) to fill in my background (and kind of foreground? I don’t know, do you think the desk counts as being in the foreground?)

Six

Tip on composition, focus points, and zooming in and out in your art piece.

After finishing my flat colors (and minor details like the wood grain, popcorn ceiling, and the area rug), I went ahead and double checked that my flat colors aren’t taking away from my focus point, and that they are still catering toward the composition of my art piece.

This is why I said composition is important. Composition doesn’t just mean how the characters, objects, or camera is on the page, but how the colors coincide with each other, and if they are doing the art piece justice. Thus, I like to zoom out of my piece, look at it all as a whole, and see if it’s what I want the composition of my piece to feel like.

Seven

A few tips as I flat color my characters!

As you might have assumed, flat coloring in your characters is so much of a hassle, and as much as I love the paint bucket tool, what works best for me is the magic selection tool. I select the area outside of my lineart, and the areas that I don’t want to fill, and then inverse it, and fill it.

Once it’s filled, I then go in with flat colors to the different objects, like in this case, since they are interacting with each other, and flat color in those if they are not the same color as the original. This way, when I go in to color each individual, instead of having an endless supply of layers, I just use the color select/magic select tool and select the color from the first flat color layer, and then on a new layer I can put in more flat colors, and then just use that same layer, with a different ‘base color’ selected to add more layers to that one. It makes the process of drawing just a tad faster in my opinion. Just a little shortcut.

And I’ll have my flat colors done in no time, and only a couple of layers, too, instead of a different layer for each character, or a lot of clipping layers (Cause for me, the paint bucket tool hates clipping layers… is it just me? Do I have to adjust the settings on the tool? Clip Studio, are you reading this? Can you fix my problem?).

Eight

We’re getting off track, back to composition.

 

Now that we’ve got all our flat colors in, we can turn back on those notes from before, to see if it’s still matching the composition that I want for my piece.

As you can see in my art, I keep those triangles for the girl and the cat, and you may be wondering if there are other triangles in the piece, and the answer is, yes. There’s a triangle that’s formed between the girl’s arm and forearm, and the cat’s tail and back, as well as smaller triangles in the desk and the objects on the desk. There’s also a triangle formed against the cat’s back and the closet in the background, even if the lines aren’t tangent to each other.

 

But we can’t just leave the image as flat colors, can we? That's up to you, honestly, but for me, the answer is no, we can’t. And that’s why I’m not going to. Remember that focus point?

Yeah, that one, where the girl’s face and the cat’s face meet each other? I like to keep that in mind when I’m adding in the shading, and I’d recommend having it in mind from the very beginning of your piece, even if you aren’t going to shade your piece, it’s always wise to have in mind where your light source is coming from, and what that does to the composition of your piece, and if that changes your focus point. Hence why I mentioned my line thickness when I was putting in my lineart (for the most part).

 

So where is the light coming from in this piece? Simple, from an off screen window. There’s a window that isn’t visible in the image that’s producing the light that’s shining in and hitting the back of the girl.

As a result, there’s bounce light coming off of the wall and the desk and hitting the hind legs, and back of the cat, and the chair that he’s on

(side note: he’s a cute chubby cat, isn’t he?). The screens on the desk monitors are off, and therefore they aren’t shining any light onto the back of the cat.

Because the main light source is coming through the window, that brings the girl’s front in mostly shadow, and occasional bounce light, and a heavy shadow on the ground, but only in front of the girl, and not behind her. Because the shadow is also coming from the window, which is opposite the desk, a lot of the underside of the desk, where the cables are, is not going to be hidden by shadow, since the light is coming and hitting it.

Nine

However, notice how I said main light? I wasn’t just referring to the other light being the bounce light, instead, I was referring to the LED lights that are on the ceiling. Call me forgetful, but I had forgotten to add them in, even though I had them in mind when I first started sketching the piece. Therefore, they are still a part of the composition, and how their light is going to be affecting it, has to be kept in mind as well.

If you can read my notes, the LEDs are emitting a red light, and there’s a white light coming from the window (white light as in the light from the sun). Since it’s a white light, that means that it’s a more cool light source, and not a warm light as if it was from the setting sun. This means that the main shadow of the room is going to be of a cool tone. Thus a grey blue. I like to add a new layer, and fill the layer with that color before setting it to multiply, and the opacity to 50%. With an airbrush first, I lightly add on the color of the light, on a new layer above the multiply layer, before going back in with the round brush tool, and adding in the small details and the brighter light sources onto my renderings.

Sometimes when you're putting in your light source, you realize there are things that you need to fix, and it’s okay to go back in and fix those things. Just because you put your flat color in, does not mean that you can’t go back and fix something with your lineart. In fact, I end up fixing my lineart a lot after I already put in my flat colors.

Ten

Like I said before, the light from the LEDs is red, and therefore the shadow that is coming as a result of that light source will also be of a warmer tone, and therefore that’s why I chose a red/grey color.

Using the round brush tool (my literal favorite friend when it comes to shading and highlights), I went through and kept in mind where my LED light source was coming from, and added in the new shading.

 

Let’s be honest, how often do you only have one light source in a room? Take for instance you're sitting at your desk at night with your lamp on, but the moonlight is still coming through the window. Standing in front of a car with its headlights on? There’s still light coming from the sun or the moon, depending on the time of day. Therefore, I always like to add an extra layer of shading, and this time the blending mode is set to color burn.

Conclusion

Now let’s review:

 

Focus point is where the two faces meet each other. The girl and the cat both have their own triangles that meet at that focus point. Their lines of action are also coinciding with the point, giving it more emphasis.

To draw attention to the focus point in this rendering the angle expands outward, and so does the depth/angle of the picture, making part of the desk in the foreground and part of it in the background.

After all is said and done, and you make sure to sign it, you’re left with a cute and innocent looking picture. Remember that the composition of the piece is also there to invoke the feeling, and overall ‘vibe’ of the art piece. The lighting is supposed to help that composition of the piece, and therefore is also a part of the composition, as well as the colors involved, in both the light source, and the flat colors of the art piece.