Composition consists of puttings things together so they fit together, and make a whole effective unit together. To compose means to put together. In the same way that building a car means to manufacture or aquire parts and putting them together so they will transport people around, so composing a work of art means to manufacture or aquire parts and put them together so the whole will accomplish the desired purpose. In a universe as complex as this, anything that accomplishes something tends to be rather complex itself. Unfortunately this means that, while making the individual components, one can easily get swallowed up in the components and forget about the whole. What is ideal is that this happens rarely and that you snap out of it quickly. Since the whole is the work itself, if you forget about it, you might easily do things with the details that bog down or even counteracts the purpose of the whole. One good way of accomplishing good composition is through similarity. If you, walking on the street, see two similar looking girls together, dressed the same, you readily assume they belong together and may be sisters. Similarity will work on a lot of different levels. A gnarled old tree next to a wrinkled, wheather-beaten old man is an example. But it can also be simply a matter of style. If for instance you use similar brushstrokes to the different parts of a painting, you already have a good start. If you use radically different painting styles for different parts of the same painting, you are in trouble unless you are very sure of what you are doing. Some might argue that the placement of very dissimilar objects together may create artistic ideas. There is some truth to this, as seen in "surrealism", for example, with big flying apples or faces with doors in them. But please notice that successful examples of such are normally made only by accomplished masters, and it is as difficult as juggling knives while balancing on a couple of chairs. Drill: Look around and find at least three sets of several similar things, placed in proximity to each other. Drill: Make sketches for five works, each consisting ONLY of similar objects. Make a finished work of one of them. Drill: Make a work of dissimilar objects, which still fit together because of a very distinctive style they are all rendered in.
Composition One: Similarity