Digital Painting - Perspective, Composition and Rule of Thirds

Perspective 

It is important to get perspective right when digital painting as it is my job to help make a 2D canvas fool us into a sense of depth and space. For this I have been performing 1, 2 ad 3 point perspective exercises.

 1 point perspective is great for corridors, halls, and alleys, it is important to remember the horizontal and vertical lines remain at 90 degrees but depth always aligns to the point.

 2 point perspective has 90 degree horizontal and vertical lines and once again the depth aligns to the points.

3 point perspective requires us to have a third point above or below off the page to align with height, this gives the object a sense of great height or depth. 

Rule of Thirds and Composition

This is a simple idea of how to compose a scene, picture or footage. Rule of Thirds is important, it is conveying message without words and is used all the time. It can be practiced by dividing up the scene or canvas into 9 equal squares. by doing this you can compose the image in a way that is stable and balanced. Below is a still from James Bond Skyfall. The image has been divided into 9, the characters occupy a large area on the left, and centre bottom, and a large void space on the right. The viewer isn't swamped with information.  

By disobeying the Rule of Thirds and composition you get the opposite effect, where the image is unbalanced and wrong to the viewer, it can create feelings of uneasiness and tension.