Bravo!!!! I work at the Angel Academy of Art, Florence, and we teach our third-year students pictorial composition and how to use Dynamic Symmetry. All designers work with a grid, but a grid will not COMPOSE your painting: it helps the artist fine-tune the placements. Pictorial composition uses fugues, counterpoint, parallels (as you point out), value schemes on which one hangs hue schemes, a unifying field, the introduction of an anomaly, field colour, mother colour, colour chords, etc.

The simple Rule of Thirds (which is a tiny part of the Basic Armature) is for incompetent amateurs (as you imply). I can’t resist adding that there are no rules in art, there are principles. If I do this, this will result; if I do that. that will result. These principles are how colour works, and how placement works—there is no way around these principles, just as there is no way around dying if you jump off a skyscraper without any safety devices.

I am going to have our full-time students (there are 60 of them) watch your brilliant video.

Michael John Angel

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Hi Tavis,

Thanks so much for letting me visit your fantastic site. For the next few days I hope to explore it a little more. I’ll be signing up to view other articles over time. Very nice job breaking down my painting compositionally.

You have a wonderful site and Myron would have been so proud to know his work is being carried on so beautifully. He was a great inspiration to me and I feel so fortunate to have studied with him. He became a mentor and a friend to me.

Best of wishes,
Dot
Red Stone Farm Studio

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Thank you, Tavis! I am so excited about the content you’ve put together. And haven’t even looked at the book yet! I’m sure you understand that feeling of Ah Ha!!!! I’ve been looking at youtube videos and checking my email all day for this. I feel like its sort of a “missing link.

Barbara

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Hey Tavis, Thanks for sending that over. Awesome blog, you have opened my eyes to a whole new world of composition. I’m a photographer and I’ve never liked the rule of thirds, I always thought it created boring images …..I’ve been looking for new info on composition, but never really found anything worthwhile. Going to start implementing the grids into my workflow straight away!!!

Regards,
Clinton Lofthouse

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This is really a gold mine of information… Thank you so much! I am sure to be posting more across all of these post. I have been trying to understand composition for some time now, for photography, Graphic Design and Fine Art.

Russell Spears

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Dear Tavis, there are no any particular reason for this letter, just want to let you know that your site is the best educational site in the Art of Photography in www. Great job, thank you for it.

With best regards,
Boris Kaminer

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Hi Tavis, as you you know I’m a loyal user of your design and compositing series. As a graphic designer and illustrator I came late to photography (6 years ago) and was shocked that almost none was using compositing rules, except The Rule of Third, or they worked so hard that their images would fit into a Fibonacci coil … but almost with the lost of an statement in the pictures.

I’m teaching a lot of design and compositing for photographers and of course of mention your method. Hope it will bring you some additional sales or subscriptions. 

When i started to work with your method I never thought that I could internalize that into my pictures … but after a while it worked like riding a bicycle or driving a car, without thinking too much about it. I often do checks of my work and every time it worked out well I have a big smile on my face.

Thanks a lot for all your work.

All the best,
Martin Duerr