Using "Camera Position" For Mood

Continuing the composing for mood posts series... thingy from last week.

So, apart from light and shadows, we can use the "camera placement" to evoke or enhance a feeling in a picture.

To the examples!: 

Low angle 

Placing the eye level low, will make things appear big, powerful, imposing, in control, or important and looked up to 

 

High angle

Placing the eye level high will make things look small, weak or in distress 

 

Closeup

It's really good for showing facial expressions, it lets us see what a character feels or think. It's also useful for showing important details. 

 

P.O.V - Point Of  View

If closeup lets us see how the character feels, P.O.V, puts us in the character's shoes. This can be used for a lot of different purposes 

 

Tilted view (Dutch angle/tilt)

This is a fun one. Tilting the image, gives an unbalanced look, which really helps when you want to get a bit more action from your image, or to just create an uneasy feeling.

 

 

You should experiment with where you place the "camera", you may find something that works and unique, which will improve your composition.

I hope this post benefited you.

Next time other tools that can help us evoke a feeling in a painting.

Light and Shadows

Mood, in my opinion is really important for a painting, especially if it meant to convey a story point. Light is a very important tool to use when creating compositions for your paintings. How you light your scene influences the mood of the image.

Low amount of light (low key),

usually is more sad, creepy or mysterious.

 

While high amount of light (high key),

tends to have more happy, calm mood.

We can use the shadows to add or omit information.
Here the shadow adds information we know there's a teddy bear in the room

Here the shadow hides the figure. 

To me it makes it seems creepy or mysterious because we can't see who it is 

 

Just to play with this idea, I painted in the figure and brighten the shadows.

Much less mysterious.

Soft diffused lights are better to show beauty and well... softness.


while hard lights tend to be more dramatic


There are other ways to use light to create mood, such as its direction - different angles create different effect and its sources - for instance candle light vs sun light



Yeah it's fairly obvious and simple, but it useful and it isn't that much discussed.
That's all for now. I hope you found this helpful or a least entertaining :)
Next time Using "Camera Position"  For Mood