“FOREGROUND TO BACKGROUND”

April 5 and 6, 2025
DENE CROFT STUDIOS
North Vancouver, B.C.

This workshop will cover some elements and principles of composition, with a focus on foregrounds and backgrounds, and their importance in making or breaking your painting.

Foregrounds are entryways, leading the viewers’ eyes around and through your painting. Sometimes the foreground is the focus, but if your centre of interest is elsewhere , placing too much emphasis on the details in the foreground tends to change the focus of the whole piece. We will be talking in great length about how to incorporate different methods to move the eye around, including using roads and paths, streams, as well as lines, both real and imaginary, creating movement and rhythm in your painting. Also covered will be atmospheric perspective – how to attain the sense of distance. It is easy to take a great photo of distant mountains, but how do we portray that distance on a 2 dimensional surface? There are many ways to do this, and we will be talking about them in this class as well.