Above: Original painting The Emerald City by Jim Brooks (from the Abstracting an Urban Scene Painting Project).
Below: If this were my painting, I'd crop off a large portion of the sky and add some more blue in the foreground. I feel that in the existing composition there's too much of the total area of the painting where little is going on ("sky area") and it dominates the subject ("city area"). Cropping off the top section of the composition allows the buildings to dominate the overall composition, and I think the wider format adds a sense of the city spreading sideways.
I would also increase the sliver of strong blue in the foreground to lift the buildings of the city up, more in line with the Rule of Thirds. At the moment it's too narrow a band and makes the composition feels unbalanced to me, because its strong color demands I look at it.
Below: If this were my painting, I'd crop off a large portion of the sky and add some more blue in the foreground. I feel that in the existing composition there's too much of the total area of the painting where little is going on ("sky area") and it dominates the subject ("city area"). Cropping off the top section of the composition allows the buildings to dominate the overall composition, and I think the wider format adds a sense of the city spreading sideways.
I would also increase the sliver of strong blue in the foreground to lift the buildings of the city up, more in line with the Rule of Thirds. At the moment it's too narrow a band and makes the composition feels unbalanced to me, because its strong color demands I look at it.