Frame and Arrangement

Frame or picture area refers to the specific flat surface area within the borders of your picture. Ie an area within a set of given dimensions. Within this you can place importance on the different elements within your image by varying the scale, positioning and relative size of each individual element.
You can better organize and give a sense of harmony to the different and often varied elements with in your composition by overlapping them. This technique can be used to better communicate an idea by drawing attention to a particular element.
The frame is of particular importance as it can be used to crop certain aspects of the elements within your image so as to create more interesting composition with a greater sense of depth, atmosphere and tension.


Hokusai

This image by Hokusai shows just how ambitious you can be with composition within a set frame. Here there are variety of different, almost opposing view points ie that of the top down river but front on water fall. However the way the shape of the cliffs has been arranged within the frame (one side seems to neatly lock into or flow along the contours of the other) gives a strong sense of harmony and unity between the various elements that would otherwise be at odds with each other. This liquid sense of flow within the image complements visually the elements within.



Marc Aspinall

Here Marc Aspinall uses the frame to push the most important elements of the image to the very edge of the image. This combined with the slanting elements of the cliff and police tape creates an uneasy sense of tension and vertigo within the image. This is exaggerated further by the fact the bottom of the cliff is cropped off giving a sense of great height on what is assumed to be the coast due to the fact a tie is scene to be blowing violently in a strong wind (it is fully horizontal to the vertical lines of sight pointing down the cliff).


Brian Saunders

This last image is particularly interesting due to the fact that, rather than draw in the piano, it is simply left as negative space. This creates a frame within a frame allowing bold dramatic shapes to dissect what would be an other wise bland image. Furthermore the fact that elements of the image a drawn in both in front of (ie music sheets) and behind (the figures and window) the negative space creates a really effective sense of depth within the image.

Me, an Elephant and a Butterfly

Given the task of arranging myself, a butterfly and an elephant within a frame so as to create a sense of depth I thought it would be best to approach it by depicting the elements in reverse order of size. This is biggest intuitively a viewer knows that a butterfly is smaller than a man which is smaller than an elephant which by therefore, by arranging them in such an order, helps create a more dramatic sense of depth through a clearer use of fore, mid and background.

My firth set of roughs did help me begin to flesh out this compositional idea, however given the speed at which I was working and the softness of my pencil were far to messy to transition into a final images as the clarity of the different elements wasn't particularly clear. Therefore I decided to switch to creating a series of inked roughs on which I slowed my drawing process down which resulted in much better roughs with more readable compositions.

In the end I went with the roughs where the viewpoint is taken from within the undergrowth. This is because I felt it created a much more effective sense of space by clearly distinguishing between the environment of the elements of the front and mid ground and that of the background. Furthermore in my mind it seemed to add a certain element of tension to the image as it appears I am carefully and quietly moving towards the elephant (ie due to moving within the undergrowth with out scaring away the butterfly).
In addition to these considerations I also tried to vary tone, ie darkest for foreground and lightest from back ground so as to further separate the the different elements and levels of depth within the image. However I don't think I have employed this technique as effectively s I could have done as, although there is a clear difference between the elephant and butterfly, the contrast of tone between me and the butterfly isn't great enough leading to the two elements becoming some what merged which takes away from the illusion of depth.