How to Draw with Good Composition

Two Poinsettias, one breaking a borderline

Composition is an important part of creating any artwork. It's possible to get very skilled at realistic drawing and still get artworks that look bad on the page. Composition means "where to put your subject in the drawing." Here are some simple rules for placing your drawings on the page in a way that even art experts will like the results.

Difficulty:

Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Sketchbook or drawing paper
• Pencil or drawing tool (pen, charcoal, conte)
• Triangle and ruler
• Kneaded eraser
• Workable matte fixative (unless you use pens without penciling first)
• Cardboard and cutter or premade plastic or cardboard viewfinder.

1. Composition sketch, traditional portrait layout

   One of the easiest tricks to get a good composition in a portrait is to borrow just the composition of a professional photographer's movie still, prom photo or glamour shots photo. Photography relies so much on good composition that professional photographers have to be good at it in order to sell anything!

   Thus, borrowing just the layout of a professional's photo and doing your subject the same size placed the same way on the page will not violate copyright. Very often with portraits that traditional portrait composition is so common and traditional that you wouldn't be able to tell what photographer it came from! Avoid "borrowing" unusual layouts, stick to the traditional ones you see in multiple sources.

   Scale the photo to the size of your art, or do the art at a size that is proportionally the same as the photo -- my thumbnail sketch is 2" x 2 1/2" so that is the same proportion as an 8" x 10" photo or artwork. Blow up or reduce the photo to size on your printer, then just trace the general outline of the head. If the person's hair obscures the shape of the head, pick a photo that has hair similar to your subject -- be sure your subject is in the same pose.

   My example is for a 3/4 view, which is the most flattering portrait pose. If you do full face portraits or profiles, then place them like professional full face photographers do.

   You can borrow compositions for landscapes or still lifes too, as long as your subject is radically different. Don't do a Mount Rainier painting with exactly the layout of a Mount Rainier poster -- use the layout from a different photo of a hill or mountain and just place it that high or low on the page, off to the side or not.

   Copying good compositions may help you get an eye for composition. Try different variations in thumbnail sketches like this one, they don't have to be detailed. Just proportional and put lights and darks where they will go on the final artwork. Be careful to make thumbnails proportioned the same, or your composition will change in the final version!

2. Rule of Thirds diagram

   The Rule of Thirds -- this can be applied to so many types of drawings that you'd be surprised. There is something instinctive in human beings that responds to it.

   Choose the size of your drawing, in this example I did another 2" x 2 1/2" layout to represent an 8" x 10" artwork, but it can be any proportion at all.

   Divide the area into thirds in both directions. I used red lines to show this and black lines for my outside dimensions.

   The four points where the lines cross, which I outlined in green so there's no mistaking what they are, each represent one of the best places to put the focal point of the drawing. If there are people or animals, put one of the eyes on one of those spots. If it's mountains or a landscape, put dramatic things there, like the strongest contrast of light and dark.

   Incidentally, the horizontal lines are also two natural places to put the horizon line for a landscape, though you can place the horizon lower or higher those two positions automatically put two focal points on the horizon. If you're going to place a tall strong cool looking tree as a focal point, put it centered on one of the vertical thirds lines.

   Using the "Rule of Thirds" to plan a painting can't go wrong. There are other good composition methods, but this is one that'll definitely avoid problems with placing things, which is why some art schools present it as an ironclad rule. They figure once you get skilled enough and good at seeing good composition, you'll break the rules because you're an artist and artists are rulebreakers.

   So rather than say it's an ironclad rule -- the Rule of Thirds is a safe way to get a good composition any time you don't want to experiment. Useful for beginners and probably a natural tendency in many good artists, but like any rule it is something you can vary.

3. The left side snowman is "Kissing" the left side of the image -- and it looks bad!

   No Kissing!

   Okay, you can snog your boyfriend or girlfriend while you're drawing, as long as your significant other is interested. Or even your kids or pets or parents. What "kissing" means in art is what happens when you put an important element in the drawing just touching the edge of the art. Either leave some space between the edge and the object or let it completely go off the page.

   Here on another 8 x 10 shaped sample area are three snowmen, one is kissing and the other two aren't. I also added a horizon line more or less at the thirds level and a winter tree that connects two thirds points, which improves it... but not enough to overcome the feeling that snowman on the left is playing Mime Pressing the Wall against the left side of the page.

   Why kissing is a bad idea is that it breaks the suspension of disbelief. When you look at a picture, it's like looking at a window into the world of the picture. Subjects that exactly touch the outline draw the eye to the outline and remind the viewer it's there, it's a picture -- and lead the viewer to look away from it. The overlapping snowman in the extreme foreground looks more like he's inviting the eye into the picture, the world of the picture is bigger than just the part that shows.

4. Poinsettia crossing out of the border for a dramatic effect.

   A cool thing you can do is break the outline! Just because kissing draws attention to the outline doesn't mean that going beyond it doesn't work. The large poinsettia seems to be reaching right out of the picture, because the outline I drew has gaps in it for the petals that stick out. This can be very dramatic.

   Notice that both poinsettias center on "rule of thirds" points. When doing this, be sure that it balances well on your entire image area and that the point of the subject that sticks out doesn't wind up kissing the real edge, or it will destroy the effect.

   To get a good composition on the entire piece, I placed the edges of my scan equally distant from both points of the poinsettia that sticks out and from the top and side edges of the box within the image. It's not precisely straight and would look nicer if it was, but for a thumbnail this is enough to give the idea of a good composition.

   Thumbnails do not need to be exact! They're a tool to show you what will look good or not. When you get ready to do a serious artwork, do many thumbnails to the same proportions as the real drawing till you decide you like the composition.

5. Using a cardboard viewfinder.

   Make or purchase a cardboard viewfinder. Take a piece of cardboard and measure out the proportions of your drawing -- 2 1/2" x 2" for 8" x 10" art, and so on, just take the inches and convert them to quarter inches or eighths of an inch. Use a triangle or protractor to get the corners exact 90 degree cuts.

   Make one for each shape of drawing you do. 4" x 6" drawings would get a 2" x 3" viewfinder, and so on. Mark them up and cut them out with scissors or an art knife, carefully. Then when setting up a still life or something you'd like to draw, including portraits, hold up the viewfinder in front of the subject and move it back and forth till you see the composition you want.

   Plastic ones with sliding sections to change the proportions are available online and in hobby shops, if you don't want the trouble of making this tool by hand.

   This is where composition starts to become intuitive. Rearrange things till it looks good. Pay attention to the Rule of Thirds and avoid kissing, but don't be afraid to put in a boundary that'll be broken and make the scene more dramatic. The more thumbnails you make, the more sketching you do, the more you study photographers' compositions, the better your eye will be for spotting what will make a great picture -- and what needs to be cropped before it can work.

   Some viewfinders have two crosshairs going at the thirds point to make it even easier to choose good compositions. I'd recommend one of those if you consistently have trouble eyeballing the four Rule of Thirds points, you can do this yourself by taping four black threads across the back of a homemade viewfinder as long as they're pulled taut and placed carefully.

Tips & Warnings

• Try numerous thumbnails while planning a serious drawing or painting to decide the right composition before you put in all the work of drawing it large and detailed. They don't need to be precise, they just need to give you a general idea of the size of the subject within the frame.

• You can combine thumbnails for composition with a black and white value drawing, then do another thumbnail in color with felt tips to see how the color harmony works.

• Study the compositions of famous paintings to see the Rule of Thirds and also to get good ideas for your own compositions. Posing your mom the same way the Mona Lisa is posed does not mean you're copying the Mona Lisa!

• Don't do a portrait so large that the top of the person's head goes off the page unless that person has very big hair. Even with a big-haired person, it still looks better to keep the hair-shape within the borders. Don't place the face so close to the top or the side that the hair goes off the page. If long hair goes off the page at the bottom, that's okay though.

• Composition matters even more in abstract art than figurative art. If you're creating a mood or abstraction, be sure the shapes and dramatic contrasts follow rules of good composition or it'll come out badly and be very hard to see why.

Resources

• View Catcher at Dick Blick
• QuicKomp Artist's Tool at Dick Blick