Drawing and Painting the Landscape – Rule of Thirds

 

St Ives Harbour - Buildings - Rule of Thirds

Lesson 32 of  Drawing and Painting the Landscape by Philip Tyler is about the rule of thirds - a popular technique for composing visual images. The “rule” divides a scene into thirds (both horizontally and vertically) using two equally spaced horizontal lines and two equally spaced vertical lines. Aligning important elements of a picture along these lines or at their intersections is supposed to create more visual interest than placing the subject at the centre.

Rule of Thirds Grid

Philip suggests exploring the rule of thirds in your compositions. As an exercise, I tried to improve the two images I picked in the Root Rectangle exercise. I used a rule of thirds and a phi grid to refine the selections - a phi grid is like a rule of thirds grid except it divides the image according to the Divine Proportion resulting in grid lines that are closer together; which in turn moves the more important elements of your picture closer to the centre.

Phi Grid

I looked at over 20 different options for each scene and ended up with selections almost identical to the ones I picked in the original exercise.

St Ives Harbour - Boats - Rule of Thirds

In both cases I favour images in which the lower third is a foreground of empty sand. As I work on the pictures some more, I may try to include some extra details and contrast at some of the points of intersection.