ABSTRACT
You’re looking at a blank canvas, or napkin, or sheet of paper, and thinking, “Where do I draw that first line?” Maybe after a few seconds you make a decision. Then the second, the third, and so on and so on, and when point becomes line becomes plane becomes something we free-associate with, an image is formed in our minds, open to interpretation on the canvas or drawing medium, and quickly becomes subjected to 310criticism. As designers, for some inexplicable reason, our minds immediately look for structure within balance, color, contrast, foreground, background, and abstraction. In 1797, John Thomas Smith writes:
Two distinct, equal lights, should never appear in the same picture: One should be principal, and the rest sub-ordinate, both in dimension and degree: Unequal parts and gradations lead the attention easily from part to part, while parts of equal appearance hold it awkwardly suspended, as if unable to determine which of those parts is to be considered as the subordinate. “And to give the utmost force and solidity to your work, some part of the picture should be as light, and some as dark as possible: These two extremes are then to be harmonized and reconciled to each other. (Reynolds’ Annot. on Du Fresnoy.)
Analogous to this “Rule of thirds”, (if I may be allowed so to call it) I have presumed to think that, in connecting or in breaking the various lines of a picture, it would likewise be a good rule to do it, in general, by a similar scheme of proportion; for example, in a design of landscape, to determine the sky at about two-thirds; or else at about one-third, so that the material objects might occupy the other two: Again, two thirds of one element, (as of water) to one third of another element (as of land); and then both together to make but one third of the picture, of which the two other thirds should go for the sky and aerial perspectives.
JOHN THOMAS SMITH Remarks on Rural Scenery, 1797