The way people crop their art is driving me nuts

I keep seeing really good pieces in galleries where the artist cropped right through a hand or a foot, and it throws the whole composition off. I had to fix my own piece three times last week before the framing felt balanced. Has anyone else noticed this or am I just being picky?

2 comments

2 Comments

faith_thomas27d ago

Noticed this with a painting I was fixing last month... kept trying to get the whole hand in the frame but it just looked cramped no matter what I did. Ended up cropping right through the wrist on purpose and it actually worked better than the full version. Sometimes breaking the rules is the only way to make a piece breathe.

faithbaker27d ago

Oh man, I feel this so hard (no pun intended, I swear). I once spent three hours trying to frame a simple flower vase shot and it looked like a mugshot until I just cut the whole vase off. Sometimes our brains just need to stop listening to the "rules" and let the picture breathe.