The #1 Composition Rule You Cannot Break

Summary

Ian Roberts discusses the number one rule in art composition that should not be broken: keeping the viewer's attention within the picture plane. Though rules in art are often challenged, maintaining viewer engagement by not directing their gaze out of the painting is crucial, especially in representational art. Roberts demonstrates this concept by highlighting pieces that purposefully break this convention and others that illustrate how minor changes can inadvertently lead the viewer's eye away. He suggests techniques to review and adjust compositions to ensure viewer attention is retained.

Highlights

• Ian Roberts discusses the essential rule for keeping viewers engaged in art. 🖼️
• He explains why conventions in art are crucial, especially for representational painting. 👨‍🎨
• The discussion includes how certain compositions might intentionally break the 'picture plane' rule. 🔥
• Roberts shows how minor compositional adjustments can affect viewer focus. 🔍
• Great tips on using mirrors and upside-down views to spot unintended eye paths. 🪞

Key Takeaways

• Don't break the rule: Keep the viewer's attention inside your painting for maximum engagement! 🎨
• Representational art relies on conventions, not strict rules, to guide viewer's eye movements. 🖼️
• Using perspective and composition, artists can ensure viewers don't drift out of the visual plane. 🔍
• Even small changes in intensity or edge contrast can shift viewer focus dramatically. ✨
• Reviewing art through mirrors or upside down can reveal unintentional eye paths. 🔄

Overview

Ian Roberts emphasizes the inviolable rule in art composition: ensuring the viewer's attention remains within the picture plane. While it might seem laughable to apply strict rules in today's dynamic art scene, this one stands out as essential. Roberts distinguishes between rules and conventions, particularly in representational art, where understanding and applying perspective effectively keeps the viewer engaged.

Through a series of examples, Roberts shows how and why certain artworks intentionally break this rule. He contrasts them with traditional compositions where even a slight change can send the viewer's gaze outside the intended visual frame. This insight cultivates an understanding of how an artist can control viewer experience through careful planning and technique.

To avoid unintentionally losing viewer focus, Roberts advises artists to review their work by looking at it upside-down or in a mirror. This fresh perspective can reveal unintended paths that the eye might take. By adjusting contrasts and focal points, artists can ensure their compositions are seamless, pulling viewers right into the heart of the artwork. It's all about creating that captivating experience that keeps viewers exploring every detail of your piece.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Skepticism About Art Rules The chapter titled 'Introduction and Skepticism About Art Rules' discusses the seemingly rigid rules of composition in art. In the context of 2020's contemporary art scene, the idea that strict rules still exist is treated with skepticism and humor by Ian Roberts. Despite the modern tendency to dismiss such rules as outdated, the chapter underscores the importance of understanding certain foundational principles in mastering composition.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Representational vs Non-Representational Art The chapter explores the skepticism around strict rules in art and how artists often break these rules to create admirable work. It questions the universality of these rules, suggesting that advice such as expressing oneself authentically and having the courage to be vulnerable is more valuable for artists. The discussion seems to focus predominantly on representational painters, implying that most artists fall into this category.
• 01:00 - 01:30: Conventions in Representational Art This chapter discusses the distinctions between representational and non-representational art. It challenges the conventional notion of abstract and representational art by highlighting that all painting, regardless of its detail, is an abstraction since it consists of marks on a two-dimensional surface. The focus of the discussion is on representational art, particularly within the context of Western artistic conventions, which have a long-standing tradition.
• 01:30 - 02:00: Perspective and Conventions The chapter discusses the historical development of conventions in representational art, focusing on the illusion of depth on a two-dimensional surface. It covers the timeframe from the late 1300s to about 1890, emphasizing how perspective became one of these conventions. The text notes that perspective wasn't known to artists like Giotto in the late 1300s as it hadn't been invented yet, but it is now a recognized convention.
• 02:00 - 02:30: Keeping the Viewer Inside the Picture Plane This chapter discusses the concept of keeping the viewer engaged within the picture plane of a painting. It emphasizes the importance of understanding and utilizing perspective, highlighting that knowledge of this convention helps convey mastery. If perspective is not applied correctly, it's noticeable and suggests a lack of understanding. The chapter further explores the idea that painting involves a series of conventions rather than strict rules, focusing on the key 'rule' of retaining the viewer's attention within the artwork.
• 02:30 - 03:00: Examples of Breaking and Following the Rule This chapter illustrates a scenario where an artist's work is displayed in a juried exhibition. During the opening night, a couple becomes captivated by the artist's painting, spending a considerable amount of time observing it. The artist reflects on this interaction, noting the importance of creating engaging and captivating images that hold the viewers' attention, which is the desired outcome for any artist.
• 03:00 - 03:30: Nicolai Timki Example - Intentional Break In this chapter titled 'Nicolai Timki Example - Intentional Break,' the focus is on the concept of breaking traditional painting rules intentionally. The narrator discusses showing an example of a painting that dramatically breaks these norms for specific reasons. The intention is to demonstrate how easily one can alter traditional representational paintings to make them less confined to conventional techniques. The chapter emphasizes the fluidity and flexibility possible within artistic expression.
• 03:30 - 04:00: Timki Example - Pulling Out of Picture Plane The chapter discusses the intentional design of a double-page spread in a book, focusing on how the layout directs the child's attention to the next page. It highlights that this is a consistent feature throughout the book, suggesting a purposeful strategy to engage the reader and lead them through the narrative.
• 04:00 - 04:30: Chardon Example - Sense of Unity The speaker discusses an artwork by Nicolai Timki from 1955, focusing on its composition. They highlight the structural elements that guide the viewer's perspective, creating a sense of unity within the piece.
• 04:30 - 05:00: Final Advice on Ensuring Viewer Engagement The chapter titled 'Final Advice on Ensuring Viewer Engagement' explores techniques for capturing and maintaining the viewer's attention in a visual artwork. The discussion focuses on how elements such as colors and composition can guide a viewer's eye through a painting. It uses examples from Nicola Tim Kaufman's work, noting how intensities and focal points direct the viewer's gaze, ensuring that they are engaged and drawn into the artwork. The importance of orchestrating these elements to create a cohesive visual narrative is emphasized.
• 05:00 - 05:30: Conclusion and Subscribe Prompt In this final chapter, the artist discusses the importance of orchestrating the elements in a painting. The focus is on how to use a fence to create a transition and guide the viewer’s eye out of the painting. The artist emphasizes creativity and intentional placement, rather than relying solely on naturally occurring perfect alignments, to achieve the desired outcome in a piece of art.

The #1 Composition Rule You Cannot Break Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 [Music] hi Ian Roberts mastering composition and the laboratory of our painting process so I'm saying this week the number one rule you cannot break in composition and you could say in the year 2020 with the contemporary art scene the way it is the idea there still might be some rules left seems almost laughable and usually
• 00:30 - 01:00 when someone expresses to me a rule about art I'm skeptical because probably I've seen somebody that's broken that rule and made something admirable so we're gonna get to that I mean you could talk about a rule being you know expressing yourself authentically having the courage to be vulnerable to give that expression but that's more like advice right even though it might apply to all artists it's more like good advice so for representational painters which I'm assuming most of us are and
• 01:00 - 01:30 let's just make a clarification there we have representational art and we have non representational art now normally we think of representational art and abstract but all painting is abstract no matter how detailed the painting is it's just a bunch of marks on a two-dimensional surface dramatically abstracted from the world so just for the sake of clarity representational art is what we're going to be talking about today and there is a Western tradition of hard-won conventions that goes back
• 01:30 - 02:00 to the late 1300s right up to about 1890 hard-won conventions of crafting that illusion of depth on a two-dimensional picture plane and so representational art has a series of conventions they're not so much rules they're conventions it's how it works and so let's say the convention of perspective well Giotto didn't know perspective in the late 1300s because it hadn't been invented yet but now we all know it and if you're
• 02:00 - 02:30 painting if you know about perspective and you paint something in perspective we can see you know that convention if you don't know perspective and you and it and it's not in perspective than we realized oh you don't know that convention so there's a series of conventions not rules about heaven but the rule that I'm going to say is what you want to do is keep the viewer inside your picture plane so here's what I mean
• 02:30 - 03:00 by that supposing you're in a juried show paintings all around the wall its opening night and there's a couple going along looking at paintings and you can see they've come to your painting and they're sitting there looking at it looking at it and you realize they're finding something engaging in my image they're still there they are being held by my painting and that obviously is what you want so I'm going to show you a
• 03:00 - 03:30 few images right now the first to break this rule dramatically but you'll see for a very specific reason and then the others are normal representational paintings where I'm going to make adjustments to show how show how easy it is to start pulling it out of the picture plane so here in the first painting I'm showing you an example of someone breaking this rule and doing it
• 03:30 - 04:00 very intentionally and very well you can see that the push in the entire double-page spread is over to this line here which obviously is where the page is turned and so the child's attention is like oh well what's next and you might say well that was just an accident but every single double page spread in the entire book is like that and again
• 04:00 - 04:30 you just see it's test-taking as straight over here out of the picture plane but that's what he wants us to do this is Nicolai timki from 1955 and you can just see he's got this nice structure taking us back into here so that we have this nice array of things that were sort of looking at there but look what happens when I
• 04:30 - 05:00 create some increased intensities way over there our eye is now going right out of the picture plane this is another painting by Nicola Tim Kaufman we're obviously being pulled and everything is orchestrated to take us to the red building but look if I take this
• 05:00 - 05:30 fence and just make it darker how it starts to do this and we start to leave the painting so obviously a fence could be this dark he hasn't just found a place where everything's perfectly aligned so that he can paint it he's orchestrating it so that it all sits
• 05:30 - 06:00 comfortably together pulling us into where he wants us to look this is a painting by Chardon and you can see that he just has sort of information that's consecutively taking us into sort of this nice rich warm centre information and then there's like this secondary one out here that pulls our attention doesn't take very much of an edge here
• 06:00 - 06:30 to find that it's starting to disrupt that sense of unity instapoll is out of the painting and lastly we have this one where we come in and these birds are so beautifully painted and we come up to the child here and this all sort of supports it but you can see now how that pathway rather than ending here is now
• 06:30 - 07:00 sort of doing this just quietly taking us on to the next image there are so many images out there vying for our attention every day that you want to make sure the viewer is staying inside your picture plane because if you give them a way out they're not coming back you want the
• 07:00 - 07:30 viewer doing this you don't want the viewer doing this and that's my rule now all these different you know when you're painting everything that you're doing is a set of contrasts and you're building up these contrasts and they all have edges that are got that have lines of direction and lines of force some of them are intentional or unintentional and so one thing you can do is when you
• 07:30 - 08:00 finish a painting you can turn it upside down you can look at it in a mirror and that it abstracts it for you again so the image is fresh and you can perhaps see oh my goodness look at that there's a line of darks taking me straight out of the painting and then you can soften the contrast out by the edge of the painting leaving it so it kind of pushes this in rather than takes us out so I hope you found that helpful I hope you
• 08:00 - 08:30 found it in gauging and be sure to subscribe just down here or if you would like to receive this as an email in your inbox every Tuesday morning you can go to my website and sign up down there otherwise I'll see you next week I hope you have a great week and bye for now