Okay so you want to make a an amazing piece of art, and despite the fact your anatomy and perspective is great, the art just doesn’t look right. Why does does your art still not look amazing? It may be the composition.
For those of you who are new to art or the concept in general, composition is how you arrange or compose the subjects in your drawing. Believe it or not, regardless of how well you draw the composition can make or break the art.
There are alot of ideas and theories in composition, not all apply at all times, so I’m not going to bog you down with all the little details, and just focus on the 4 major composition concepts I use in my own art. Ready? GO!
1. NOT IN THE CENTER.
(and no horizontal or vertical lines either)
I lump these two together because its everyone’s instinct. Every kid does it, and every adult who isn’t told other wise does it. Everyone always wants to put the subject of the art smack dab in the middle and use all vertical and parrallel lines around it. This is the perfect way to make the most boring art you can.
Here is an example:
Now forgive this drawing. I’m not trying to make fun of children’s drawings. I just refuse to spend alot of time to making a drawing bad on purpose.
The point is, everything is in the center and straight up and down or side to side. And it’s boring as hell. If your art is doing this, even if well drawn, will look boring.
2. RULE OF THIRDS
This rule is often applied in photography, but it really applies to all visual art.
It basically says divide your piece of art into thirds. Both horizontally and vertically so that you have essentially a 9 panel grid. The interesting things need to fall on these horizontal or vertical lines. THE most important things in your composition should be where the vertical and horizontal lines intersect.
Here’s an example:
As you can see with my character Gear. Her body is lined up on the left vertical line. Her head and gun line up with the top horizontal line. And the most important things in this drawing, Her face and her gun, are positioned right where the lines intersect. Giving this a very strong composition.
3. DIAGONALS
So the Rule of Thirds is the most basic compositional theory. But sometimes it doesn’t always work for what you’re trying to draw. The next basic composition element you want to make sure you include are diagonal lines.
Lines that go straight across, or stright up and down are borring. Lines that move diagonal not only are interesting, but it leads the eye around the page. Its a subconscous thing as most people won’t realize it’s happening, but those diagonal lines guide the way people look at your art, so make sure the most important things are where these diagonal lines intersect. (Similar to how the most interesting things in the rule of thirds are were the lines intersect.)
So let’s look at an example:
Here is my Adventure Time Print.
So you see here, there is a diagonal line that connects the heads of our three characters. There is also a diagonal line where Finn left arm and the Lich King’s right arms line up. A diagonal created by Finn’s sword and a diagonal created by the Lich King’s left arm. These diagonals lead you eyes around the page, but more importantly where they intersect are the two most important parts of the piece: Finn’s head, and his hand.
So this piece does not follow the rule of thirds as strongly as the last drawing (it does follow the rule, just not as well) It’s the use of diagonals that make this a strong composition and an interesting piece of art to look at.
4. Triangles
This is a composition concept that Leonardo Da Vinci came up with (or at least perfected) And that’s to compose your piece of art so that the subjects form a triangle. This composition doesn’t rely on intersecting lines like the last two, but in a weird way it sort of borrows from the last two. This will be easier if I show you:
As you see I do not mean that you pose your characters so that they literally form a perfect triangle out of their bodies. The orientation of the triangle is less important than the general shape. You want it wider on one end (here shown as the bottom legs of two bottom figures.) And come to a point on the opposite end (here shown as WarAngel’s head). But when use this method of composing, you need to make sure the most important thing you want people to notice is in line with the triangle. In this case it’s the women’s faces, each one is in perfect line with a side or point of the Triangle making this a very strong composition.
COMBINING
By no means are you limited to just use one of these meathods when composing your piece. You most certainly use many at once. But fair warning It’s very hard to create a piece of art that is very strong in all compositional theories. So I recommend using one as your primary composition and the others to suppliment and strengthen it. For example:
This cover makes strong use of the Triangle composition. But I also made many uses of diagonals to lead your eye around. I also followed the rule of thirds, but it isn’t as strong as my triangle composition.
So there you go, a tutorial on composition! By no means are these the only ways to make a strong composition. Neither is it the only things you have to think about when composing. I didn’t even talk about overlapping and tangents, and composing for the use of the art (as you may have to break some of these rules when designing art for a banner or cover.) But these are the most basic, and they’ll get you started. Hopefully now you won’t have any excuses for boring looking pieces of art!
Tomorrow… I don’t know what I’m going to post tomorrow. Maybe I’ll do an indie comic review, or maybe I’ll post what I did for my 24 hour comic… I don’t know yet. But in the mean time check me out around the web!
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And if you love my artwork don’t forget to pick up my comics!
And remember. Make Comics! Not Excuses!
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