Design Composition Tutorial 1

Some artists struggle to get a nice composition in the design. It's actually not so hard. Follow these three steps to get a nicely composed design:

1-outline the flow of your design first. 

  • Circular flow for hands, palms or tops of feet.  Also can be used for above the knee, inside the arm (elbow).
  • Oval flow for inside the arm, thigh, or a long back piece
  • Long flow for a hand design, spine, down the calf
  • Square-ish flow for thigh, back, foot and sometimes the hand
  • Triangular flow for under the breast, neck or back 


2-choose your elements. 

  • One to three elements for the main part of your design--paisley, flower, leaf, triangle (Moroccan inspired), feather, dream catcher or other similar circular design, etc
  • Two to four elements for embellishments--dots, vines, leaves, buds, leafy clusters, small flowers, swirls, curls, etc.


3-apply your design with good balance. 

  • Balance out the edges of your flow
  • Space out your design
  • Place embellishments close to each other in clusters
  • repeat embellishments
  • follow the flow of your design that you outlined