Visual composition

Visual composition is the name for numerous operations, actions, and tricks that artists can use to make their work more interesting, more readable, and pleasing to look at. It's the way of placing small elements of the picture so that they look good as a whole. In the previous post I said that you can't create a good image without preparation and it's exactly the same with composition. Actually, it is one of the first things you should do when you're planning a picture. If you don't plan your composition properly there's a huge chance that your picture is going to look random and the viewer is going to have a hard time trying to figure out what is happening on that picture. 

It's quite hard for me to talk about composition without an image example, so I decided to take a picture painted by one of my favourites artists - Feng Zhu - and explain what composition tricks he  used to make it look so good. I'm not saying that I'm a composition expert. In fact, I'm far from being that, so that's only my opinion and interpretation :)

When you look at this picture, there is no doubt about what is its focus point. Your eyes unconsciously wonder towards the golden lion and that is not a coincidence. Feng made that using some composition tricks. First that is most obvious for me is using Fibonacci spiral. It is a composition technique very often used by various artists. It leads the viewer's   sight through the picture in specific way. In this case - towards the lion. 

 

Apart from the spiral, you can notice plenty of other lines that are pointing towards the beast.

Moreover, the lion is the biggest and most detailed figure on this picture, which makes your mind focusing on it. Additionally, his quite dark value contrasts with the light value of the sky creates a tension and makes it more interesting to look at. 

Another important aspect of composition is colour. It's obvious that the key colour of this picture is red. It's the complementary colour of green (which is dominant colour on this image) and it also creates tension, so by placing it on all figures on this picture (beasts and warrior), it makes them feel more important. Also, this choice supports story-telling - you unconsciously know that the warrior and cats are in some way connected. 

All elements that I described above make the right side of the picture more dominant, and Feng made sure that the left side is nicely counterbalanced. He made that by introducing the little waterfall and by giving the warrior a huge sword. Both these things have light value that contrast with the background, so again: tension = point of interest. Also the picture is nicely framed by the fragments of ruins on both sides that keep you focused on the action that is happening between them. 

Obviously, they are just a few artistic decisions that were made by Feng while creating this picture, but I hope that my analysis helped to show the importance of composition in a picture.