Advancing art class: 1

I am excited to be taking another art class at the Spruill Art Center with Marilynn Brandenburger.  This class is focusing on the process; Moving from planning the painting (selecting a pallet, making sketches and draft paintings) to creating a final product.   The class meets once a month for three months.  For the first meeting we each brought a recent piece of art to share and critique.  I took one that I had been working on (this was the second version) and I still was not happy with the background.

One of the things that came out of the critique was that the center of interest in the painting, the reels, was lost.  This was due to some hard lines that competed for interest and lead your eye away from the reels (the rods, timber walls and chairs).  By cropping the painting to include less of the chairs, wall and rods the painting's focuses returns to the reels.

The hard part is determining how much to leave out.  I need to leave in enough of the wall and chair so the viewer can understand what they are seeing, but remove enough to that it no longer completes with the reels.