My good friend Brad Silberberg is an accomplished nature photographer. He often shares photos with me to use as reference photos for artworks. The beautiful thing about Brad's photos -- aside from his sensitivity to the plants and animals around him -- is that the photographs are already well composed. All I have to do is sketch, draw, or paint them.
Except for making practice sketches, when we artists set out to create a drawing or a painting, our first step is to compose the scene. We lay out the elements of the painting in a way that is pleasing to us & draws the viewer's eye in.
When we use classical composition, we divide the painting into thirds vertically and horizontally. Our eyes are naturally drawn to the places where the lines cross. Notice how John Singer Sargent used this knowledge to make a strong composition in his painting, Crashed Aeroplane (1918).
Below you can see the painting without the lines and feel the impact of Sargent's composition. Do you notice your eyes traveling back and forth between the people working and the crashed plane? Does it make you ask questions about the story behind the painting?
When using classical composition, the artist places important parts of the painting either on one of the 1/3 lines or where the lines cross, as Paul Cezanne did in his Self Portrait (1875) below.
Notice how Cezanne's eyes, the windows to his soul, are placed on the top 1/3 line. Here's the painting without the lines.
When a figure is included in a drawing or painting, it's also important to give their eyes space to look within the composition. Below is John Singer Sargent's painting, "Paul Helleu Sketching with his Wife" (1889).
Notice how each person has space to look ahead within the painting.
The same approach works for birds like this American Crow. It feels more comfortable because the bird has space to the right to gaze and move into.
It also feels like the crow is curiously studying us!
Look at the way the water ripples and light reflections highlight the elegant curve of the swan's neck below.
I love the radiating lines created by the twigs in this photo of a male American Bluebird. The diagonals catch our eye and keep it moving within the photo.
The clouds radiating from the bottom right of this landscape up to the top left create another beautiful diagonal element. Notice how the horizon line isn't dead center of the photograph, but down on the bottom third.
Sometimes a creature like this mayfly is more at home upside-down. Do your eyes travel up the arc of the mayfly's body and over to the insect's eye? Another inviting composition!
In a portrait -- whether of a human or of a horse like Bella below-- the eyes are the most important part of the composition. I find my gaze is drawn up to Bella's head by the broad diagonal lines in her neck, and her eye is right at the intersection of a horizontal and a vertical 1/3 line.
Does your eye travel around within the photo above? That's a sign of a good composition!
You don't have to precisely follow the rule of thirds. It's okay to create a composition that you personally find pleasing. Looking through a viewfinder -- your phone's camera, or a simple rectangle cut out of a piece of cardstock -- is a great way to compose a scene in nature before you draw it.
The trick with composition is to think about it before you create a finished drawing or painting. A few minutes of planning will result in greater satisfaction with your final work.
Many thanks to photographer Brad Silberberg for all of the nature photographs shown in this post!
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