Learning objectives
■ How to produce strong compositions
■ Highlight the focal point
■ How to manipulate photographs to make successful paintings
In the past three articles we have looked at diff erent ways to compose a painting using directional lines, letters of the alphabet, and thirds and rabatment. Each of these techniques uses lines to guide the viewer through the picture and to help us to place features in the best possible places. Now I want to help us to think about one more set of lines that are crucial in a composition but are often not thought about. These are the borders, the boundaries, the four straight lines that form the edges of the painting. These are as much a feature of a painting as the objects you put within them, and they can make a great diff erence to the overall composition.
I also want to look
