Photoshop
Turn composition chaos into actionable steps using placement, size, colour and texture to build visual hierarchy with advice from
Whether you’re a seasoned artist or just beginning your artistic journey, understanding composition makes all the difference. It has the power to guide the audience’s eye, making certain elements pop while subduing others to improve storytelling.
In this workshop, artists Amanda Duarte, Julio ‘MZ09’ Cesar and Filipe Laurentino will share the keys of composition, ensuring you use them confidently and effectively.
We’ll start with thumbnails, where manipulating the position, size and angles will dictate dominance in a scene, and how greyscale tones can add depth with overlapped elements and atmosphere. And no illustration can be complete without the perfect splash of colour and texture, so we’ll also talk about these nuances.
From well-known concepts like the rule of thirds through to more subtle considerations like framing and staging, this workshop provides an objective look into the world of composition. Let’s get started!
1 The importance of positioning
The more an object is placed towards the centre, the more attention it will get. While it can be visually striking, especially when displaying other elements symmetrically, it can also make the composition feel too rigid or stagnant. We aimed to illustrate a dynamic battle between our hero, Caito, and a colossal Beholder. While neither character occupies the exact centre of the composition, the focal tension between them does.
2 Set the stage
Staging is the way you arrange elements, as if you were organising a theatre stage. Consider what elements are important to this scene, where are they displayed, and why. With a backdrop of a village’s destruction, the impending battle between Caito and the Beholder is staged as the scene’s pivotal moment.
3 Use the rule of thirds
The rule of thirds is about placing any important elements along the lines and intersections of a 3x3 grid. Positioning the hero and monster in the opposing thirds guides the viewer’s eye along that diagonal, while also ensuri
