Corvus’ Birdhouse

hi! sorry to take a literal year to answer this but I wasn't quite sure how to explain how to do compositions ehe...

In general there are already a lot of good tips for composition around, like these you've probably come across already. I don't reference these exactly when I draw, but a lot of art I like tend to follow these patterns, so I think I ended up adopting them too

Personally, I think having a foreground is one of the best ways to make your scene look natural and cohesive! They're also really easy to use, because you barely have to render them at all. You can just have blurry dark silhouettes to frame your scene!

But the most important thing I consider for composition is definitely character story and symbolism! The more story elements you can pack into a drawing the better, especially for illustrations! Character relationships, plot elements, character psychology, etc can all be represented through scene elements and background items, even if the characters themselves aren't there. @mewguca wrote an analysis of one of my drawings of her character that articulated my thought process better than I could here, it's a great example of how I like to use symbols in my art. There are a lot of common symbols you can use (e.g. birds, cages, flowers, etc) that are good shorthands for conveying specific, widely recognisable messages, but it's good to get more character-specific elements too if you can!

You can also do this by playing with scale, lighting, colours etc. I wrote down some quick notes about how I planned out some of my recent drawings, I hope they're helpful!