Hello. I will go over major composition elements in art. I will do my best to simplify it and keeping it short.

Golden Ratio

Golden ratio is one of the most talked about composition technique, so I will not talk too much about it. It is a mathematical term that shows up in nature a lot. Because of that pattern, we apply it to some designs in artwork as well. It is nice to use, but will not make your art automatically better, so do not rely on it as a formula. Here are a few images I made to simplify what it is.

Using this guide you can easily create the golden ratio template if you do not want to use something off of image search. The next number should be the combination of the previous two. As you can it is goes like this : 1 -> 1+2 -> 2+3 -> 3+5 -> 5+8 -> 8+13 etc.

 

Well how would you use it in real life? For example, violin follows the golden ration rule. I made a quick image to show that.

So how to use in art? The easiest way is to use it with the spiral. The emphasis of the painting could be in the middle of the main golden ratio scheme. Here is a quick example of it.

I decided to create a quick repaint of my old artwork to show you how you could use the golden ratio. I also cropped the image for better composition based on the golden ratio. The first image did not use it at all. The second image has more emphasis of the rock. This could be used to create a smooth eye guidance in your artwork.

 

Keep in mind that you can stretch and pull the golden ratio set up correctly. The numbers do not matter, what matters is their ratio to one another.

Eye guidance techniques

So what is eye guidance and why is it so important? In short, you want to ask what you want your viewer to look at. It is your job as an artist to guide your audience on where to look in your painting. I will use simple examples in order to demonstrate it.

Using color is super easy way to add to the focus point. You can work with contrast, lightness, saturation. Let's say the image is very blue. If you add red to your character, then it will stand out super easily. Try to keep the color zones of your image unified. If you add too many color it will look unbalanced.

Size is another way to use to focus your image. Keep in mind that your image should at least contain small, medium, and large shapes in order to make then stand out. Make it clear to the viewer that they are different. Slight differences will not work as well ( first example ).

Light. One of the biggest composition tools. Do not light your scenes evenly. It depends on the painting, but in most cases it is best to have less light on thing that are not important at all. In the first image you can see I added simple light on all characters. Even though the right two are clearly bigger, it is still hard to see which one should be dominating. In the second you can clearly see where I want you to look at.

Keep in mind that cameras blur images. It depends on how you do it, but it is commonly called Bokeh effect. Look it up and see how it works in a real world. If you have an object too close to the camera, it will be blurred for the most part. It cannot focus on the entire image. Painting can replicate that effect and create something similar. The most common way to use it is to use Filter -> Gaussian blur.

This is another way to focus on a subject. Values.

 

Make you object way darker than everything else. It will stand out in the crowd. The opposite way also works. Making the object the lightest in the scene will help the viewer distinguish it from the rest.

Another way to improve your artwork is to use guiding lines. It is sometimes hard to spot them, but they are used to improve the focus of the painting. Easy examples would be human. Use hands and eyes to guide your viewer. It is super easy way to add to your painting if you are drawing multiple characters in the scene.

You can also use it in architecture and landscapes. It is a bit more straightforward. A good way to use it is to thumbnail your painting many times. Using basic 3 value painting could help you establish good eye sight.

 

Let me pull an old painting. In this example you can see the road helps to guide the eye to the houses. The mountain angle also helps to focus on the house. The house is also darker in color.

Rule of thirds

Very similar to the golden ratio. In short, if you divide you image into thirds, it is best to show the high contrast things on the intersection point. Here is how it looks.

The red dots are best to be used to show the details and the most important things. This is not a formula, so do not try to do it every single time. There are a lot of different other ways you can make a great composition.

In this painting I just made a very simple rule of thirds use to emphasize the main structure. It is not the only way, but it worked for me on this painting.

Balance

Balance is another quick way to check if you image is good or not. You want to make sure you do not put too many things on one side of the canvas. Here are quick examples of what could it look like if simplified.

As you can see the balance gets affected by the size and placement. Color can also play a huge role in developing the image. Just keep in mind that if you have a huge object on the right side, then something should be used to balance it out on the other side.

A great way to practice all of these techniques is to create abstract art. I used to be in a painting class where they did not let us draw anything besides abstract art. It is a very useful way to only focus on the composition and emphasis. I highly recommend practicing it if you have some free time.