Frank Bramley's "Domino!"

Great compositions rarely arrive fully formed in your head. They require rough drafts. A color study is where that happens. Here's an example.

Frank Bramley, Study for Domino!, 8 3/4 x 10 1/4"

For example, Frank Bramley (1857-1915) came up with an interesting idea for a painting: A girl and a woman sit at a table. The white dress fuses with the tablecloth to make a larger shape. And the dark shape of the chair blends with other dark shapes.

Nice idea, but still a little "blah." The wall and the ground plane are flat and undefined, and the white shape is stuck in the middle.

Frank Bramley, Domino!,  24 x 36"

Look how he develops it. The figures are playing dominoes, adding a feeling of dolce far niente. A couple of prints hang on the wall, a carpet covers the floor, and a few stairs lead off to another part of the house, with just a dash of light in the hallway. By developing the Z dimension with foreground and background, he improves the houding.

Everything is a foil for the big effect. Those linked white shapes cascade into the foreground, all painted with that angular, square-brush technique. Great shapes, no lazy edges.
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Books: Stanhope Forbes and the Newlyn School