Composition is the arrangement of elements in your artwork. It’s a major aspect of photography, painting, drawing, and any other visual medium. “Good composition” generally means any arrangement that keeps people looking at your artwork for longer.
One of your main jobs as an artist is to make a statement; to show the viewer how to see the way you see. You generally want to emphasize the most interesting thing about your image, the element that made you most want to create this artwork. Composition helps you do that by being thoughtful about where you place the elements of your scene relative to each other and to the frame.
Key Concepts
Guiding the Viewer’s Attention
The main point of composition is to guide the viewer’s attention. Depending on the type of image and your goal, you may wish to direct the viewer’s attention to the main subject, and/or to keep viewer’s gaze inside the frame of your image for longer, taking it all in.
In “Starry Night,” Van Gogh uses value and color contrast and spiral lines to guide the viewer’s eye in a circuit that keep us within the frame. The black vertical figure (cliff? cypress tree?) leads to the stars which lead to the moon which lead to the yellow clouds which lead back to the black vertical thing.
Ways to guide the viewer’s attention
- Emphasize a focal point to make your main subject stand out, so it’s what the viewer notices first and most. You can use the subject’s placement in the frame as one tool in the toolkit: for example, by making it larger than other elements and setting it off in space. For a clear message, align this with other attention-getting tools such as color contrast and level of detail.
- Create a sense of depth using perspective tools to create multiple layers (foreground, background, midground, and in-between). This allows the viewer to feel they could “walk in” and encourages immersion in the world of your image.
- Lead a circuitous path for the eye leading the viewer’s gaze to move naturally from one element to another within the image, slowing them down and getting them to look longer. This path might consist of literal lines (leading lines), implied lines, or lines of gaze.
Ways to lose the viewer’s attention
Here are some examples of what poor attention management looks like.
- No focal point/flat hierarchy. If everything in the image seems to be kind of on the same level of interest, the viewer won’t find anything interesting to fixate on. “Starry Night” wouldn’t be as eye-catching with no big moon.
- Distracting elements or competing visual hierarchy. Imagine if the town in “Starry Night” had a little construction project with traffic cones.
- No foreground is a common depth problem: your scene may contain midground and background, but without any element closer to the viewer, the scene may feel far away and/or flat. Imagine “Starry Night” without the foreground black cypress tree (or whatever it is). Still nice, but lacking in immediacy.
- Leading a path out of the image. Lines that go directly to the corners of the image, or a subject gazing past the edge of the frame, may encourage viewers to let their gaze to wander out rather than lingering within the frame. What if instead of spirals, Van Gogh had his cloud lines leading out of frame?
Visual Balance
Different elements in your image will seem to have a different visual “weight” based on attention-getting attributes like size, value, chroma, and level of detail. Balance is the idea that the image should have a certain amount of weight on each side. Images with all the “weight” on one side may feel unbalanced, while those with exactly equal weight on each side may feel too balanced and therefore boring.
In Mondrian’s “Composition in Red, Yellow, Blue, and Black,” the larger red square has the most visual weight because of its bold color and size, but the black, blue and yellow squares also pull some weight. They’re necessary to counterbalance the weight of the big red square. The image feels balanced but not static.
Dynamic vs. Static Composition
Dynamic compositions are those that create a sense of tension or movement, while static compositions feel more steady, tidy, and resolved.
| Static or Peaceful Elements | Dynamic or Tense Elements |
|---|---|
| Balance | Imbalance |
| Symmetry | Asymmetry |
| Centered subject | Off-center subject |
| Horizontal lines | Diagonal or non-straight lines (e.g. jagged, curved) |
| Even numbers | Odd numbers |
| Repeating patterns | Broken patterns |
| Negative space (empty space / breathing room around the subject) | Edge tension (subject extends up to, or past the edge of the frame) |
Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” is an example of a scene that uses mostly static elements (centered composition, balance, horizontal lines) to create a sense of resolution an inevitability. Dali’s “The Persistence of Memory” by contrast uses mostly dynamic elements (asymmetry, diagonal and non-straight lines, elements in threes) to create a sense of tension and unease.
Dynamic compositions are generally considered more interesting, but a static composition can also be used to convey a particular story or mood (e.g. calm). The downside of a static composition is that it may feel boring, losing you that all-important viewer attention. New artists often default to creating a more static composition, so it’s useful to challenge yourself to include some dynamic elements.
Composition Cheatsheet
There are many tried-and-true rules/tools/guidelines for shortcuts to interesting and/or dynamic composition. Here are just a few of them.
The Rule of Thirds
Imagine lines across your image that divide it into thirds horizontally and vertically. Place the center of interest at any of the intersection points. [What is the Rule of Thirds?]
The Rule of Odds
Odd-numbered groups of things (e.g. 3, 5) are more dynamic than even-numbered groups of things (e.g. 2, 4).
Leading Lines
Use lines to literally lead your viewer around the page: to a center of interest, into the distance (deeper into the world of the photo), or in a circuitous route.
Frame Within Frame
Frame your center of interest with an enclosing element such as a doorway, window, etc.
Foreground Interest
Place something in the foreground of the image to create a sense of depth and distinct planes of close, middle, and far distance.
Diagonals
Diagonal lines tend to look more dynamic than horizontal or vertical lines.
Fill the Frame
Frame the subject in such a way that it is cropped and implied to keep going beyond the edges of the frame. Make the viewer imagine what’s not shown.
Rule of Gaze
If your scene contains a human or animal subject, leave space in the direction they are looking. They shouldn’t be looking right at the edge of the frame.
Parting Tips
The “rules” above aren’t really rules; they’re guidelines, or tools for your toolbox. In a world with infinite options, having a few tried-and-true templates to fall back on can help you avoid reinventing the wheel every time. But rules are meant to be broken, so don’t feel constrained by rules you don’t like or that don’t benefit the story you’re trying to tell.
If you want to learn more about composition, I suggest taking a photography class. I find that some of the best teaching about composition comes form the world of photography since it’s such a defining element of the medium. Photography is a medium that pairs well with other forms of visual art such as painting and drawing because it enables you to take your own reference photos. If your photos have great composition, you can use them as references without re-solving the problem when you pick up your paintbrush or pencil.
If you’re feeling good about composition, try plein air: it’s composition challenge mode! On the fly, you have to narrow down what “frame” you want to place on the wide world around you. You have to decide what you want to edit out or mentally “move” (e.g. placing a tree in a different relative position to a mountain for a more pleasing composition). You may also want to include actually moving elements, like people, that don’t stay put long enough for you to paint them in a specific place and position; that means you have to decide and decide quickly.