I'll do the February Xone, and you:

1.)Think about what you want to do first, without doing anything else. Part of the creative process is premeditation, at least it works for me. "Spontaneity" is terrific and not to be discouraged, but only when you have a strong impulse and when you have fairly practiced skills, as an artist, dancer, writer, musician, and so on.

2.) The background is part of a picture, but it's one of thousands of variations, Stygg, and the one up two posts back has already been done. By me. So don't begin your grand idea with a fancy hotel wall (the elevators are to the left ).

General: What are the dimensions of the composition, what's the page size? How much space will my drawing occupy, and then what if anything should go in the background?

Specific: Should I have a lot or only a little contrast between the foreground box and the background? How do I use "contrast"? With solid colours, with texture, with a gradient, with one large imported bitmap?

Go from general to specific considerations, and the result will be you build your artwork outa stone, okay? Nothing fails, nothing falters. You can even get away with some imperfection with the box IF the entire composition hangs together.

As I mentioned earlier, your audience might move their eyes all over your composition (in fact, they should, by carefully choreographing areas on interest), but first impressions count, and usually an audience likes or dislikes a piece withing 2 or three seconds of seeing it.

Which means the overall composition needs to be attractive to catch, then sustain viewer interest.

There's a psychology behind art, isn't there?

-g-