The Rule of Thirds and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
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The rule of thirds has been simplified down to four key points and/or four lines. Talk about limiting your composition. Talk about tremendously limiting your growth as an artist. That’s equivalent to tearing out 80 keys of a grand piano, leaving Mozart or Beethoven only the eight they would need to play twinkle-twinkle-little-star…for the rest of their lives. That’s not going to cut it! Most people know how to play twinkle-twinkle-little-star, just as most artists have heard of the rule of thirds. How are you going to stand out from the others if you are regurgitating exactly what everyone else does?
As Leonardo Da Vinci says, “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication,” though I know being the designer and master draftsman he was, he didn’t mean that you should handicap yourself. To squash all traditional knowledge laid before you and boil it down to a book called “Composition for Dummies” which harps about the fantastic possibilities of the rule of thirds (yes, there is such a book). If you’re a serious artist, it’s time to take the blinders off and learn composition the right way. Throw away the rule of thirds. Take it out to a field, shoot it, bury it, and don’t look back!
