TEACH YOURSELF | How To Lead The Eye

Recently, I made about 1800 thumbnail studies from How to Train Your Dragon. Every time there was a cut or a camera move, I would hit pause and draw the shot. I got the idea to do so from a CalArts classmate, who in turn got the idea from a post by Emma Coats. While I did the sketches, I paid close attention to the composition of each frame. As Coats instructed in her post, I asked myself a series of questions about the shots, such as, where are the characters positioned? Why was there a cut? How is the frame divided? How are the angles and lines positioned in the shot? What do they lead the eye to? Where is the camera positioned?

I did this exercise to study what makes up a ‘good’ composition. I had come to accept that to learn about composition from movies, it is not enough to simply watch a lot of movies. In fact, when a composition is well made in a movie, it is often difficult for the audience to notice it – it flows into the storyline so well that that the audience gets carried away into that world.

To many people, myself included, composition can therefore be a bit of a mystery.

The first time I heard about composition was in my Art History classes during high school. In these classes, we would analyze paintings from around the world and how they reflected the thought pattern of a given society during a specific time period. When we got to the Renaissance and Venetian art, we learned that these artists used shapes, such as converging lines and figural pyramids, to purposefully guide the eye through the painting and convey the ‘mood’ of the time. We learned that Renaissance artists used composition as a tool for creating visual depth and figurative meaning.

(Source: Marsha Russell)

Still, I wasn’t sure what makes a ‘good’ composition. If composition is the arrangement of shapes within an image, then at what point does it become a ‘bad’ combination?

To settle the ins and outs of composition, I took a class at CalArts that covered composition. I found that composition is really just about making art that looks good to you while being mindful of the purpose behind the composition. 

In a nutshell, composition is about not settling before you’ve reached a point at which you’re happy with the ‘flow’ of the piece.

That being said, there are a few basic ‘rules’ to keep in mind.

To reinforce and remind myself what I have been taught, I have started analyzing movies on my own, like I did How to Train Your Dragon. On top of that, I like to scout online to find any resonating insight. In this post, I’m going to share some of the handouts and videos that have been helpful in understanding how to lead the eye through a composition. Most of these sources agree that good composition is about clarity, i.e. leading the eye to a point of interest, while being mindful of what you’re trying to communicate story-wise.

Advice

Artist Rad Sechrist thinks about the relationships between shapes as he makes compositions. He has made a handout on his site Rad How To that analyzes a painting and how the artist guides the onlooker through it.

(Source: radhowto)

Another example of leading the eye is to point everything toward a single center of interest:

(Source: andreasdeja)

Having the perspective lines converge where you want the audience to look is another way to guide the eye.

(Source: Marsha Russell)

Yet more ways you can guide the eye through a composition is by contrast. You can create contrast though lighting, colors and/or patterns. Whichever element stands out the most (creates the greatest level of contrast to the rest of the elements) in a given composition will be where the eye looks. So for instance, if you have a composition with a majority of circular shapes and then one triangular shape, the audience will be attracted to the triangle.

(By Loui del Carmen, source: theartcenter)

Here is a video by Ahmed Aldoori that analyzes some paintings by Paul Felix. Aldoori explains how Felix uses some of the principles I have mentioned above to create his compositions.

I hope these links and explanations help!

As always, thanks to all the artists who shared this advice online!

-Christine-