So when drawing, pay attention to how your subject is positioned on the page. This makes the sketchbook an ideal place to practice almost any type of design, and the more you work with a sketchbook, the better you will develop a feel for image composition. In addition, landscape formats dominate in film, computer games, and websites.Īt the same time, you can use every single page of your book for portrait formats.
You will discover it in magazines and brochures, in booklets and, of course, in other books. Your sketchbook can help you do just that.Īs an artist, you will encounter the format of your open book-a rectangular landscape format divided down the center-quite often. Of course there are rules, but you first need to develop a feel for good composition. The reason I am attempting to do so nonetheless is that I do not believe there is a recipe for learning it. It is impossible to do justice to something as important as composition in one or two pages. In the background, contrast this with other settings. Zoom in on small details to depict tiny things big. To keep with our western example, this could be a close-up of a cowboy whose dueling enemy can be seen very small in the background. It can be particularly interesting to combine shot settings within one picture. For instance, draw the same subject in various shot settings or deliberately switch settings to tell a story. It shows the head, the face, or sometimes only details like the eyes.Īttempt to use shot settings consciously in your drawings. The closest setting, of course, is the close-up. The detail goes from about head to waist.ĥ. The medium shot is often used in interiors and shows part of the figure, for example seated at a table. A knee shot shows the figure so close that it is cut off mid-thigh (below the “holster”).Ĥ. The subject is much closer, about ten yards away.ģ. Subjects appear as tiny figures, like the cowboy on the horizon.Ģ. The widest setting is the extreme long shot, for example a landscape. Here are the five most commonly used shot settings, from very far away to very close up:ġ. Therefore, it is important for artists to know and use the various shot settings purposefully. The switch between settings creates accents.
If you deliberately use different shot settings in a series of pictures, such as in a book, it makes the series more interesting. It suddenly becomes more emotional and direct, confronting us in a different way than subjects we only draw randomly in the background. Depicting a subject very close up brings it closer to us. Using these terms in illustrations changes everything, though. Complicated-sounding terms like long shot, knee shot, and extreme close-up mean nothing more than the distance between the viewer and the subject, and therefore how big the subject is in a drawing. Westerns can be used to explain how one of the most elementary techniques in drawing works: shot settings.
If you can learn one thing from western movies, it’s how to draw. Felix is a professor at the Münster School of Design and lives in Berlin, Germany. His work has appeared in many magazines, including Harvard Business Manager and Psychology Today. He is the author and illustrator of three books on watercolor and has illustrated more than fifty books in the last decade. Felix Scheinberger is an illustrator, artist, and designer.