Composition

To help improve our art and talents we attended a lesson in composition to help us understand how can make our images better without changing the idea just placing the scene different. Composition is how elements or objects are objects are arranged in photography, art or sculptures. By bringing different compositions into a piece of art you can change the dynamic look of the piece and make it more visually interesting making more out of a single piece of work.

Our focus was on understanding the rules of composition and how they effect the visual look of art. We first learn the rule of the golden point. The golden point is the spot that the eye finds most comfortable, this point welcomes the main focus of a piece of art as the eye will always go to this point. By placing a main piece on the point will mean the area of your art that you feel needs to have the most focus should situate on that point.

We were asked to find images to analysis using the different methods so I'm going to use this painting done by Leonardo Da Vinci to helo show the different rules of composition, Leonardo Da Vinci was a very skilful artist, his work is very detailed and perfect but what you don't see is the composition he was able to place in his art. This one piece i fell could have more than one style of composition within which wouldn't be surprising for a artist of his talent.

His work example:

The golden point can be found using a cross over of lines. These lines are made from squaring a piece of the medium used and having a imaginary line come across to show the square, a line would go from from one end of the whole medium to the other and another would come across from the other end of the smaller rectangle of the medium to the opposite corner of the first edge of the square made



This is what it would look like with the lines visible, the small triangle formed were the lines meet is the golden area but the cross over is the golden point, this is were the eye find it easier to look at. In this picture you can see how this characters hand falls perfectly into place, suggesting this was done on purpose for us to have a look at his hand in that position because if not it would be there for not much of a reason. This point leads me to question the art itself like why is he like that and why does the artist want me to view that point meaning i have already ingaged myself into the image.

The Rule of Thirds is a series of line that break an image into 9 squares, this gives 4 crossovers of lines, these again are the golden points of the rule of thirds meaning that if you want to make a image more dynamic getting this points fitting with the image will change the art in a more positive aspect.



Again this image follows the rules of thirds to me as the points fit onto different aspects of the character meaning that these points are making our eyes too see what the artist wants us to focus on. I felt this works well with this image because it leads my eyes from the face down to the arm, around to the elbow and up perfectly to his thumb and hand. It cant be by accident that two rules both fit the image perfectly at a very similar point on the hand meaning that he has thought this image out thoroughly.

Now the Rule of L is simple as an art piece will have a main point of intrest and the rest is background space or other things happening. On a image an L can be used to create a smaller area of focus. Again with the same image we can see the result.



Now again the character fits perfectly into a smaller area and that his arm follows these lines soo closely. The inner area L shape created does hold art and visual imagery but you can see how its not as relevant as the main part and it also is dull and dark and more of background than anything else. What its doing it focusing you to a area and then forgetting another so that area can be duller or less defined but still the image looks great. I like how in this example again the arm follows the lines so closely with the L holding small irrelevant piece of clothes and just blackness of the background.

'L' shape doesn't have to be in one area it can rotated around the medium and there can even be 'L's' inside 'L's' if you want to show more in one image but want to seportrate the picture out but keeping the image dynamic. This image was created Feng Zhu



He has spaceships that have a strong L shape feel about them and a lot going on in one image, so using these method allows you to get a good focus on each area separate but still a good unstanding of the image as a whole. I also feel that it helps with depth and the smaller the L the more your drawn into the image and it helps with the distance shown in his work.

Another image i have found that uses the 'L shape' composition is this comic book cover :



This image is using two 'L' shapes to create three boxes on the image to bring you into the image. The first its focusing you on the title of the comic which is important as brings you to remember the name and if u are a reader of this magazine then u will automatically see it, it would next would bring you down to view the background. The next section and helped shaped the characters body pose and allows you eye to follow him smoothly down the page. The final box again shows details of the background and faces but also more importantly leads you to the names of the creators making them more likely to get noticed. Meaning this way has made this page more beneficial for more than one reason.