Guide to Composition in Drawings
Whether you're a beginner or an experienced artist, understanding composition is crucial for creating visually engaging artwork. Good composition helps guide the eye around your piece, draws the viewer’s attention, and tells a story.
Basic Composition Techniques
Learn essential composition techniques that enhance the visual impact of your drawings. While it's important to understand these techniques, don't be afraid to experiment and break the rules. Here are some go-to techniques:
- Rule of Thirds: Imagine a tic-tac-toe grid over your image and position focal points on the intersections to create balanced compositions.
- Centering: Experiment with centered compositions, allowing the focal point to take center stage while building a supporting environment around it.
- Leading the Eye: Guide the viewer's gaze by aligning various elements in your artwork to create flow, gesture, and rhythm.
- Threes & Triangles: Create a sense of active balance by incorporating triangles or groups of three objects in your composition.
Common pitfalls to avoid:
- Confusing tangents: When two objects touch each other but don’t overlap, so it’s not clear which is in front of the other
- Unclear Overlaps: When it's not clear which objects are in front of others, the viewer can't tell what plane they're on (where they are in space).
Check out the full Drawing Foundations class for more in-depth guidance, examples of all of the above, and demos!
Happy Drawing,
- M
