What a Difference a Crop Makes
June 28, 2012
I've been practicing drawing faces lately and sometimes I post the results to instagram. This has led me to figuring out that I can make even the faces I don't like look better with some clever cropping!
I drew/painted this face with a water soluble graphite pencil:
And then I started playing with my iPhone and taking photos that cropped out large portions of the face.
I feel like there's a smirk in this one.
Just by getting rid of the lips this one becomes all about the eyes. And those bangs!
This crop is just so much more interesting than the original. By cutting the face off it creates movement in the composition.
Cropping saved this hideous disaster...
...and turned it into something mysterious and malevolent.
This cropping trick works for lots of stuff other than drawings of faces. Three ways that I often use cropping are:
- A busy scrapbook layout can be tamed by cropping it down and matting it onto a plain piece of dark cardstock.
- A too busy bit of painting or art journaling can be softened by painting in some white space -- this is essentially cropping it down, just without scissors.
- A total craftastrophe usually goes into my "scrap drawer." I often pull these pieces out and slice them up to use as collage fodder for new art! For whatever reason the sliced up pieces have beauty that the original just doesn't.
What do you think about creative cropping?
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P.S. Thanks to Jamie for pointing out that a short segment from Scrapbook Soup TV was shown as part of The Soup on E! last night.