Viewfinders

Hi, my name is Stacy Minch. And today I'm going to show you how to use viewfinders to determine your composition. When you're painting. I find these viewfinders very helpful when I go out in the field, maybe painting outside or painting at a studio where I have to quickly determine the composition of my painting. Um So how you use a viewfinder is you hold it out in front of your eye and you can move it around to find the composition that is most pleasing to you. Maybe you want the objects to be a little smaller. So you bring them closer to your eye or if you want the objects to take up more space in your frame, you pull your viewfinder away from your eye. Um When you're using a viewfinder, you want to use one with the same aspect ratio as your canvas. So I have cut a few different viewfinders here out of map board. The first one is an eight by 10 ratio, which is um two by 2.5 inches. So, and to determine whether you have the right aspect ratio, you divide the top number by the bottom number So two divided by three would be 0.66 that would be something like a four by six or an eight by 12. Um eight by 10 is four out of five. And that's why I shrunk this one down to two by 2.5. Um If you want a six by 89 by 12 or 12 by 16 ratio, that is a 3 to 4 ratio or 0.75. Um So I often take something like this out into the field so I can quickly determine what my composition will be. It helps with placement of a head on a canvas or also narrowing down what you see in your field of vision if you're outside or in another environment. This is a viewfinder that you can purchase. It's called view catcher. And this one has a sliding center part where you can um adjust to different aspect ratios. So right here would be 11 by 14 and I could find a composition for an 11 by 14 panel with that, this one is eight by 12. And then on the other side, it has guides for eight by 10 and also 12 by 16, which should also be nine by 12. So you can slightly adjust that if you have the same aspect ratio as your panel, you can create a composition in your viewfinder that will help you set the proportions as you are creating your painting. Another kind of guide that I've used before is this small clear guide. So this was just made with perhaps a piece of uh discarded plastic. I think this one was a muffin container from the grocery store. So what I did was cut out a rectangle in the aspect ratio of three different panels. This one would be eight by 10, this 14 by six or eight by 12 and this 19 by 12 or 12 by 16. And so I drew guides on these ones, these guides are representing kind of loosely the rule of thirds. I eyeballed it a little bit and that helps you place your items or the focus of your painting in a pleasing position in your composition. So in order to use these, I just look straight through. Um so here I have um my four by six guide and I've drawn the rule of thirds on this guide to kind of guide me where pleasing compositions might be made. So you can see as I move over here, the white vase is placed um approximately where that top rule of thirds on the right side is, and the little ink bottle is also in a pleasing position in this point of intersection. So that would be an interesting composition. The rule of thirds is kind of an approximate measure. But you can see if I move so that the white vase is right dead center. It creates a more awkward composition because the orange bottle is touching the side of the canvas. So as you use this guide, you can determine a pleasing composition before you ever set your paintbrush to the canvas. You can also make the objects smaller in your view by moving the viewfinder closer to your eye or make them larger in your view by moving them closer to the objects. So I hope that using these viewfinders will help you determine your compositions when you're out painting in the field. Thanks for joining me.