- Compositional focus refers to the organization, arrangement, and combination of objects within the borders of a drawing space. The idea is to bring the eyes of the viewer toward your center of interest within an aesthetically pleasing composition.
There are a few steps needed to include into the drawing to achieve this:
1. Stay away from the bull's eye. A focal point placed in the very center of your drawing space is a big NO unless you have a specific expressive or artistic reason to do so. Any object that you place dead center commands the viewer's full attention.
2. Drawing less interesting objects close to the primary focal point helps direct the viewer's eye toward your center of interest.
3. Overlapping objects, or placing some objects over (or in front of) others, unifies a drawing, enhances depth of field, and creates an aesthetically pleasing composition.
- Linear perspective creates the illusion of space and distance on a flat surface. It originated in Florence, Italy in the early 1400s. The artist and architect Brunelleschi demonstrated its principles, but another architect and writer, Leon Battista Alberti was first to write down rules of linear perspective for artists to follow. Leonardo da Vinci probably learned Alberti's system while serving as an apprentice to the artist Verrocchio in Florence. You can create this image by using one point, two points, and even three points of focus.
- Atmospheric perspective refers to the effect the atmosphere has on the appearance of an object as it is viewed from a distance. While the distance between an object and a viewer increases, the contrast between the object and its background decreases, and the contrast of any markings or details within the object also decreases. The colors of the object also become less saturated and shift towards the background color, which is usually blue, but under some conditions may be some other color (for example, at sunrise or sunset distant colors may shift towards red).