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Art Composition: Can you Draw a Line?

Art Composition can be summed up in one statement from the man who literally wrote the book that most professional illustrators behold as the holy grail of illustration.

"The Principle of overlapping areas, forms and contours is the basis of all pictorial creation. Since line is our first means of defining these then linear arrangement becomes our first consideration" Andrew Loomis

After reading this art composition should become a little clearer. In its most basic form composition is the arrangement of line. Since line makes up everything then this naturally makes sense.

Tip:

A great tool when creating composition is a piece of cardboard with a square or rectangle cut in the center. This basically lets you frame the picture and will help you develop your vision and eye for how to arrange elements of a piece.

Since all art composition is based on the arrangement of line it would help to give you some examples of this. Seeing examples of this in action is the most effective way to learn composition and get the creative ideas flowing. Below are a few ways of how line plays a part as it may not seems that obvious all the time. This is just a small example of the ways line can create composition.

Composition can be based on geometric forms, letters, symbols and form and many other things.

Keep your eye out for my art composition eBook which will encompass a larger array of examples for you to study and use!

Balance

The next main thing to think about when composition is involved is balance. The piece must be pleasing to the eye.

If the balance is off you can feel it.

It feels like something should be moved over or removed. This is what you could call cropping. If you have used any sort of image editing software you have most likely heard of this. It is one of the most basic elements of "framing" a picture. The cardboard tool is great for this as it allows you to crop dynamically what you are viewing and helps you to develop your eye.

Tip:

The heavier the mass or weight of a the object, the closer to the middle line of the picture. The easiest way to remember this is the bigger the mass the closer to the center of the picture. The smaller the mass the further to the edge of the picture. This creates a sense of equilibrium in the picture.

Create A Path

Another great tip for composition is one that the great masters used all the time. It is creating a path in the composition using line. What does this mean? It doesn't mean drawing a line from one point of the picture to the other. It is creating a natural path for the eye to enter the picture and be lead around. This is most easily viewed in landscapes. The eye should enter at the bottom of the picture then naturally lead the eye around to points of interest within the piece. This can be done with skillful use of line.

Again this is best demonstrated thru examples so here goes.

You will want to avoid leading the eye to the corners of the piece as they are basically dead ends. Instead you will want to lead the eye around the piece focusing on the subject.

More examples will be covered in my eBook on art composition.

Those are some of the basics of composition. I hope you have learned a little more about how to plan your pieces. For even more in-depth tips and techniques for creating great composition keep an eye out for my eBook.

(all examples demonstrated on page are from Andrew Loomis - Creative Illustration.)

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