Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it. – Henry David Thoreau, author, poet, philosopher.
Composition makes or breaks a picture, so we often hear.
I wouldn’t disagree. The more I practice composition and the more I become sensitive to it, the more I realise the truth of that.
But frankly, if you want to go about improving your compositions, you’ll probably struggle to find an effective way forwards.
Why?
It’s certainly not because there’s a shortage of advice on how to compose better pictures. There’s plenty. The problem is that most of that advice isn’t going to help you.
Heres a good example: We often hear that we have to learn the rules of composition before we can break them.
Really?
I’ve never seen the definitive list of those rules. Neither have the people who so blithely make that assertion.
Here’s another: Some people like to insist that we should learn complex geometry like the golden section in order to improve our compositions, because the old masters did it that way.
Some of the old masters did use geometry in their compositions, sure. But most of the geometric overlays I’ve seen of old master paintings have been tenuous at best. And to my eyes, the more obviously geometric the composition, the less effective it is. Most importantly, geometry won’t guarantee you a good composition.
Here’s a particularly hilarious example of overlays I came across on youtube the other day (warning, it’s long and it’s mostly nonsense):
Notice the promise in the title to tell you geometric secrets of the composition. Looks impressive. Lots of lines of overlays. This kind of thing actually makes me quite angry because it gives you absolutely nothing useful. It wastes your time and keeps you from progressing positively.
It’s snake oil.
So how do you learn to make better compositions?
Practice.
Focussed, structured, regular practice. Practice that pushes you beyond your normal limits and practice that you enjoy.
Not very glamorous, is it? Not very impressive or exciting. Not very mysterious and certainly not a very saleable idea.
But practice works. And in fact it’s the only thing that does, in my experience.
Think of yourself as having a design muscle. If you want to strengthen that muscle, you need to work it regularly. A little every day is best.
Why does structured, focussed practice work?
It works because good composition depends on having a good sense of spacing and a sensitivity to placement and design. That isn’t something you can learn by rote, it’s not simply a case of digesting information.
Here are a few of the advantages of improving your composition through practice this way:
- You actually do get better
- It’s enjoyable
- You get over your procrastination and make a start. May not seem like much, but that’s huge, actually
- Your confidence builds as you see and feel improvement
Contrast this with trying to learn composition by rules or by geometry
- It’s frustrating. The information doesn’t translate into better compositions
- We end up losing confidence in our own abilities
- It’s difficult to keep going with no structure to follow. Like as not, we peter out after the initial wave of enthusiasm dies
Okay, fine, but how to practice?
Here’s how I approach it:
I adopted Composition by Arthur Wesley Dow as my structure. It has a series of exercises to follow so it’s a great place to start. It was written in 1912 so has required quite a lot of interpretation. There has been a lot of thinking, selecting and revising to do as I’ve gone along.
I’ve kept a record of the practice I’ve done so far here. It begins with some basic composition practice exercises. At this point I was still very much finding my feet.
It continues with an in-depth discussion of Dow’s compositional principle of Subordination, and then a step by step account of a good composition exercise using line.
At this point, I’m working on Notan designs based on drawings from life. This series began with some drawings of lilies, progressing into more abstraction as the series of exercises has evolved.
In the latest set of exercises, I’m moving further and further away from the original life drawing, using the original material as a vehicle for pure design. Here’s a demonstration of working on a border decoration based on the shapes of the original drawings.
How does that help you make better compositions?
It might not be immediately obvious why a decorative design like this is an effective way to improve composition skills. But in fact, any practice with design is stretching and working my compositional ‘muscle’, and it’ll work yours the same way.
The process of deriving these designs from the original drawing from life mirrors the actual process of developing a pictorial composition from the visual impression. This is where the art happens, it’s where we stop recording and start making pictures. I believe it’s where we ourselves enter the picture.
And it’s also a very, very effective way to develop better spacing and design skills – the core of good composition.
Eventually, with enough practice, these enhanced skills will naturally come into play as we draw and paint, without us having to think about them. That’s really the goal of all this practice: to evolve skills that with time become second nature. Automatic. A part of everything we do, effortlessly.
There’s really only one rule that will help you improve your compositions. And that’s the rule of regular, structured practice.
Thanks for reading,
Paul
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Correct me if I misunderstood you, but this is what I thought was your argument.
1. Rubrics are bullshit.
2. Here’s the real rubric.
Maybe your argument was this.
1. ‘Promised shortcuts’ are no shortcuts at all.
2. Here is my rubric which includes no shortcuts except believing my sources.
The former is absurd. The latter is a straw man for all readers who can tell when hyperbole rears its yellow pants-checkered jacket head.
How about a third version.
1. We all know that there are no shortcuts except for finding a wise teacher with wise sources.
2. Those other guys XYZ are false teachers, but you know that already.
3. Consider me as a candidate for wise teacher with wise sources.
Which you and your sources MAY VERY WELL BE!!
The fact that you attacked their arguments made me want to impose that standard on you, here. No hostility is intended.
Hi Bruce,
Actually the point I was trying to make is that the only way to improve your composition skills is to practice regularly, that it can’t be learned by rote. I’ve been giving some examples over the last few months of how that practice might be done, in the hope that they will be useful to people.
I’ve tried learning geometry to improve my compositions, I didn’t find it effective at all. the method I’m using now has been very effective for me, so I’m sharing it in the hope that other people will find it effective too.
If the clarity of that message got lost in my feeling strongly about this, then that’s a shame. But none of your characterisations of what I’ve written bear even a passing resemblance to what I’ve tried to say.
I’m trying to help people make better compositions.
Hi Paul, Thanks for sharing. Of course you are right that practice is the thing. That Leonardo video was rather bizarre, the bloke who did it has a Phd, what in I can’t imagine, surely nothing art related!
I am of the opinion that the most important element of a composition is colour, no matter how good your spacing and linear compostition it won’t rescue crap colour. In other words a good painting is a question of putting the right colour in the right place.Of course “colour” includes value, but that is inseperable from hue and chroma, in that any touch of paint contains all three elements. What do you think? Anyway I look forward to your move into colour with great interest and, as ever, wish you all good fortune.
Actually what these videos miss is that many of the masters painted those lines on their very large canvases BEFORE they painted. They used lines, squares, circles, golden spiral, and ratios like golden mean and other natural ratios to divide their canvas that would create ‘balance’ and ‘harmony’ with the ‘subject’ and the ‘space’. Then they would paint. As photographers or artists learning to recognise that space/subject and balance/harmony component is very important. What these videos do without actual detailed explanation is show a bunch of nonsensical gobbledygook to the average viewer which makes it a fail. Do not extract from these videos that the whole rubric process is flawed and a waste of time and that there are easier, faster and better ways.
Hi David, great to hear from you.
I wouldn’t disagree with you about colour. Not at all. Many of my favourite paintings from a compositional point of view are my favourites because of their use of colour. I do think though that it’s possible to make beautiful work in just black and white, and composition must play an important part in that too.
Arguably black and white is colour too though, just a very restricted use of it!
Dow says that good colour depends on a good value arrangement, and that depends on a good line arrangement. Whilst I think there’s something in that, I can also imagine paintings where there is very little value and line arrangement but beautiful colour – some Monets come to mind.
As always, I guess we should steer clear of absolutes. I have made my point more strongly that I usually do in this post perhaps. I’m sure geometry can have its place in design.
But for me, the key point is that it won’t do us any good if we haven’t developed our sensitivity to design , proportion and spacing – and if we have that, it’s perfectly possible to make beautiful compositions with no geometry at all.
Not a comment on your content, which I like. Just a note to say it’s “focused” not “focussed.”
Thanks Leslie 🙂
I try to write ‘focused’, I really do. But I always hear ‘focuzed’ in my head and I just can’t do it 🙂
I know what it’s like when someone does that to you though, so I must apologise. I twitch uncontrollably every time I see someone write ‘more then’ when they mean ‘more than’.
Thanks for alerting showing better ways to study.
Keep posting your progress, Paul! It is great to see the passion you put in the painting and the structured way of learning you have. I guess this was a long process. I am still blocked before the first step of practicing, but there is hope for me:) All the best,
Mirela
Thanks Maria Vitória 🙂
Thanks Mirela. If you have trouble practising regularly, here’s something simple for you to try:
1. choose a trigger, something you do every day as part of your routine. It might be washing your face in the morning or making your first cup of tea of the day. Ideally you will have a little uninterrupted time available afterwards.
2. Immediately after your trigger, every day, open a sketchpad and write in it “challenge completed” followed by the date. But don’t draw anything yet.
After a week of doing that, you’ll have started to get a positive practice habit established. At that point, I’d start to draw a little every day. A good exercise to try might be the Breathing Line.
Start small, start simple, get into a routine, and before you know it you’ll be practising every day.
Hi Paul.. I hate rules. My approach to composition is to try to be very clear about what it is I am trying to say/show and to use composition to try to achieve that. I find little tonal sketches are brilliant for trying out different compositions. If the masters did use geometry I assume it was because they knew what they wanted to say, how to direct our view, and worked accordingly. …not secretly 🙂
Paul:
I’d have to say that I agree with many of the points you make. While I can’t say that I’ve read vast numbers of books on composition, I will say that many of those that I have read often seem to support their supposed “rules of composition” with a few good examples that seem to fit the rules they set forth and a lot of other examples that are specious at best. Those that tout the golden section often seem to be the worst offenders. Though they present examples that seemingly support the rule, more often than not it seems a bit of a stretch. With the myriad lines and shapes that make up a drawing or painting, it’s not surprising that some of those lines and shapes might well fit into the overlay and help “prove” the author’s point. And often, those pictures that do exhibit a rigid adherence to the use of the Golden Section are no more interesting than the overlay itself. Merely fitting elements of a picture into a geometrical construct or making sure that a picture fulfills the requirements of a checklist of compositional rules is no guarantee of an interesting or engaging picture. I would assert that most of the compositions that seem based on one rule or another to the degree that the author asserts actually seem to do so after the fact; they are made to fit by someone with a vested interest in making it fit (ie. someone selling a book, video, etc. about composition).
I think that most people naturally impose some sort of order into their artwork, whether through composition, color or both. Children’s artwork, I think, is a good example of this. I sometimes wonder if our natural abilities in this regard are muted or negated as we get older and become more self-conscious about our art in response to positive or negative feedback. While I do believe that there are general principles of color and composition that serve to make a picture “work,” I don’t believe that imposing a rigid structure of do’s and don’ts to the process of picture-making necessarily produces a successful picture. I believe that the most successful artists are those for whom these rules are mere suggestions; that the ability to use them, abuse them, or discard them as needed to create a picture that connects with the viewer on an emotional level is vastly more important and, ultimately, more successful than a rigid adherence to any system of composition. The rules should serve the artist, not the artist the rules.
Long story short, I agree with you. Practice is the only way to learn composition; to experience what works and what doesn’t through a lot of trial and error. Obviously, it’s wise to take into account the experiences of others in that endeavor. But no set of rules or system of composition or vicarious experience can replace the understanding and knowledge gained by simply doing things oneself.
Rob
Hi Val, great to hear from you!
Tonal sketches are really useful, yes. Especially if you do a lot of them, trying to improve each time. It’s the act of arranging and doing that stretches our compositional muscles.
Directing the eye has turned out to be a myth though, some very interesting research has been done on that. It turns out that our eyes are drawn first to areas of psychological interest to us – faces, if they’re there, or bits of objects that we actually use – handles of jugs, that kind of thing. Makes sense really, that we’d be drawing in a picture to the same things we’re drawn to look at naturally in life.
There’s some stuff about that research here.
It’s interesting how long and how fondly that belief about leading the eye has been held. It’s been an unquestioned tenet of composition for as long as I’ve been interested in art. It turns out that we have no more control over the viewer’s eye than we have over their thoughts. Amazing really.
Loving all this, I teach Art and it’s lovely to hear so much common sense.
Thank you, that’s so good to hear!
Rob, thanks very much for such a well considered and thought out comment.
The point you make about children and their uncomplicated enjoyment of making pictures is very well received!
Perhaps the greatest and most unexpected benefit for me of practising composition this way is that I’ve rediscovered some of that uncomplicated enjoyment, and find myself considerably enriched.
I agree that video seemed kind of bogus to me as well. I’ve found that I make my best pictures when I just follow my gut feelings regarding composition. I think added practice has helped me to have more confidence in my choices.
Hi Paul,
I agree that the PhD’s video just clutters up the head of serious art students with empty correlations. I think some people study “geniuses” because they’re afraid of the work involved in developing excellence in themselves.
I’m happy to follow along with you on your search for excellence. Dow is a great resource, and seeing how you practice the principles he puts forth has been very helpful to me. I look forward to your future recommendations!
Best,
Melissa
Hi Carolyn,
Thanks for popping in and commenting, I’m very glad to hear it 🙂 I think you’re right to trust your feelings, especially if they’ve been informed and honed with practice.
Thanks Melissa. More Dow will be forthcoming.
I have a couple of posts coming up that aren’t about composition – I have been writing about it rather a lot lately – but will be back with Dow before too long.
I’m still working on a lot of notan studies based on those original lily drawings, so there’s much to come.
I love that you are using Dow’s book. I first picked up a copy because I heard Georgia O’Keefe talk about him.
I was not surprised to find that Dow was basically teaching the Japan’s art aesthetic. During that late 19th century period in Europe, Japan was all the rage and deeply influenced all western artists.
You are right in saying that Dow’s book need interpretation though. He uses a lot of language that was current and understandable to artists in the period. And if that weren’t enough, there are all the Japanese words and concepts.
It’s worthwhile material, but it takes dedicated mining.
Hi Indra, thanks for popping in and commenting.
I agree, the Dow book doesn’t recommend itself easily. But hidden within it is wisdom that I think we’re sorely in need of.
The modern ‘ateliers’ are doing a fantastic job of teaching core drawing and painting skills, the emphasis on sight size is doing wonders in reviving skills that were almost lost.
I think Dow closes the circle nicely, not decrying those skills, but adding to them and emphasis on design, beauty and picture making that I feel doesn’t get quite the attention it deserves at the moment.
It’s no exaggeration to say that Dow’s book changed the way I think about my art for good.
Excellent advice!:) Many thanks! I have started reading Dow’s book. It is unbelievable how actual is what he is teaching. If you find out about painting summer camps in Europe, please let me know. Have a beautiful day!
Hi Paul,
Just reading “Anders Zorn, A European Artist Seduces America”. It was published recently, for the recent show at the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum in Boston.
I’m at the “modern Life” chapter, where they are discussing his various studies and versions of “the Omnibus” (his paintings of groups of people on a Paris bus in winter).
There were many reasons for the numerous versions, but they all point to Zorns meticulous observations of the icy interior and light on a cold winter night. His constant practice with the composition and forms allowed him to create the more final versions, where his brush strokes were more precisely set, and final details more carefully selected. There don’t appear to be any formulas he used for doing this, he just judged it by his discerning eye.
There are all sorts of good reasons to practice, but perhaps seeing the progression made with pieces of work such as these, helps to see why we need to keep reworking our compositions in order to be better. I suppose there is no real laziness regading study and practice when it starts to become an obsession to improve.
So many realist artists are solely concentrating on the surface qualities of persons and objects, or complications in general, in order to dazzle, and the composition or beauty of the sitter or subject is lost due to missing out on the harmony.
Hi Lizz, great to hear from you!
I completely agree. sometimes I think we need to reach a certain point before we realise what’s missing.
For me, I didn’t realise the importance of composition, design – that harmony your mention – until I reached a stage where I could paint very convincing studies. Until I could paint stuff that looked like the stuff it was supposed to be.
At that point, when I’d achieved a reasonable level with what I think of as the core skills of convincing rendering – the surface qualities – there was no getting away from the fact that my pictures still weren’t very good because the design was weak. I was making visual recordings, not pictures, and the strength of the picture was entirely dependent on the set up.
The Zorn book sounds fascinating, thanks for sharing that story from it. I would think that, if Zorn was in the habit of working that way, he would not only improve the particular painting he was working on, but all his future pictures through stretching and building his design muscles.
Hi Paul,
I can’t remember where I heard it now, but another artist online mentioned ‘it’s better to paint a good composition badly, than to paint a bad composition well:)). I think you can do both!
Love the Zorn book. He’s a good example of someone who worked hard to stretch his abilities. His work was strong because he did focus on his compositions. He was determined to “out Sargent Sargent” and did so in this area.
The book shows a few examples of compositions Zorn admired and borrowed from other painters. He of course improved on them. He also worked from photographs. A lot of artists at this time were influenced by the introduction of black and white photographs.
Those early photographs were grainy or eliminated the whole range of middle tones to create flat forms like the planar patterns in japanese prints, and it influenced artists to move towards work like Manet’s
Trees and foliage became shimmering masses rather than lots of individual leaves. Images became cropped in interesting ways.
Some of the best realist work arrived at this time, no doubt enhanced by these observations of light and dark and abstract shapes and design.
A good book to read more about these notes, if anyone is interested, is Aaron Scharf’s Art and photography.
Hi Liz,
I love that quote! I agree wholeheartedly.
I’ve read that Manet worked extensively from photos, and when you look closely at his work, in relation to the kind of photos that were produced at the time, it’s obvious. for myself, I think Manet’s work suffers from quite shockingly bad technique at times – it often looks like he just can’t be bothered – but there are aspects of it I really like.
For that kind of work, I much prefer the naturalist painters, like Clausen and Langley, who also worked extensively with photos – perhaps you’re referring to them as producing some of the best realist work? I love their work.
Thanks also for the mention of the art and photography book – I’ve just added it to my wish list!
Clausen and Langley are great examples of what I meant, for many reasons.
Like Zorn, they got away from the stiffness of the academic style and the light of the indoor studio. Instead of planned poses, they caught real people in natural poses as they went about their work and life. A camera shutter was perfect for capturing these truly real moments, as well as recording beautiful compositions.
They may have used photographs, but they filtered the information through their eyes and painted as the human eye would see things, with details up front and or in the light, and all other areas less focused, and therefore less detailed.
There’s a great article about Clausen and these thoughts on Matthew Innis’s blog “Underpaintings”, if anyone is interested.
Great, thanks Liz.
Matthew has a few pages on Clausen, here they are:
Words of Wisdom: Sir George Clausen
Color Palettes: Sir George Clausen
Words of Wisdom: Clausen on Color
To be honest with you I think your way looking at composition is incorrect. Yes, if you practise, your composition could prove, however it is possible to practise forever and never improve your composition significantly. That is because composition is the whole, the gestalt, the tao as they say and like a short story it is composed, either well or not well. It’s composed well I think, if it conveys a message in a clear unique beautiful way.
So let me give you an example. I love to urban sketch. Now when I first started I tried to capture essentially what I saw. But now I compose. So, I may encounter an intriguing view and then process what I want my drawing to focus on, for example maybe I want to create a picture that forces the eye movement along the path of the sunlight in the view. Now I need a framework or sketch structure to convey that movement and I need proper colour contrast etc.
I believe I will only be successful if my composition works and my composition will work if my goal of eye movement along the light path is realized.
So composition is dependent on the concepts of the artist and he/she will employ whatever armatures that seem fit. Finally the concepts can be the artistic ones, like value, colour, light etc, or they can be symbolic, or a combo of both which I think a lot of Renaissance art is.
Cheers
Thanks for the comment Steve, I think we’re talking abut different things here.
When you talk about the concept of the picture, that to me is a wider thing than the composition. If you have a particular message you want to get across, a story to tell, then yes, that throws up other considerations that might impact on the arrangement of the elements of the composition. those are yours to make depending on the message you want to get across.
What I’m talking about here is composition purely from a design point of view. That can absolutely be practised and improved – and is very rarely well done these days.
There is cross over between the two approaches of course. But not all pictures are trying to get a particular message or a concept across, in the literal sense.
However, all pictures benefit from a composition based on a good sense of design.
On telling a story in composition, James Gurney is very interesting to read. He’s an illustrator, so the subject is very close to his heart.
I’d start here if you want to read some of what he has to say on the matter. It’s well considered and well worth reading I think.
However, leading the eye is perhaps one of the most pervading myths in the teaching of composition. It simply doesn’t work. People always look first, and spend the most time on, the psychologically most interesting elements of a composition, Faces, if there are faces present.
This isn’t conjecture, eye tracking experiments have proved it to be the case. Have a look at this post and read teh section about the Yarbus experiments about half way down. You can also read James Gurney about the same thing here. Note point 2: “Pictures do not “control” the eye. The viewer’s thought process plays a huge role in how their eyes travel through a composition.”
I’m not sure where this idea that you can control a viewer’s eye path through a drawing or painting came from, but it’s been effectively dbunked, it’s time we all accepted that it doesn’t happen and started spending our time on things that really do make a difference to the viewer’s experience of our art, I think.
Once we get over the stuff that doesn’t work, I think there are probably two main ways to approach composition, as two dimensional design, and as story-telling.
Of those two, I believe the first plays a part in every picture, but the second doesn’t (arguably).
I also think that the design side of picture making has become somewhat relegated to the position of decoration, as if that is somehow less important. It’s not a position I agree with – as the above post probably makes pretty obvious!
Thanks again for your comment. I hope I’ve clarified a little where I’m coming from on this.
Maybe we are talking apples and oranges but composition to me is the completed piece which I can vision before I start. A composition in writing is the end product as is a music composition. I think you are referring to design principles for which there are a vast number of simple exercises. Learning and practising composition happens when you make a picture, but if you have a clear idea of what composition is then your ability to gain mastery over it will come sooner.
The belief that the eye path movement has been debunked is a false belief. The “eye path” does not refer to the pupil, it refers to the mind’s eye obviously. For instance, the mind’s eye follows the light. Is that not why they named the spacecraft, “Apollo”?
You can get a thousand people to read the first few chapters of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. A thousand different interpretations does not necessarily mean the book has no central thread, it could simply mean it is a difficult thing to master.
Thanks Steve.
I think we’ll just have to accept that we have differing points of view on this.
I really enjoyed your take down on the last supper. It proves to me every one sees a different picture and it’s different every time you view it. I added more to my gallery at the end see “michael loyridas gallery” let me know. I wrote about music in color and medicine, Let me know what you THIK THANK YOU.
Hi Michael, could you email me a link? I’d be glad to have a look.
I have to call you my Teacher. After years of being clueless…..this is the first post that can explain fundamentals of composition.
Thanks for your insights.