Art advise and techniques

Mountains, slides, waves: all of these are diagonals in movement or in tension.

The larger an object is in a picture, the stronger it feels.

Pictures that affect us strongly use structural principles based on the way we have to react in the real world in order to survive.

When we see similar shapes in a picture—or in life—we relate those shapes to each other: they seem to belong together.

I cleared almost all the pieces away again, and tilted some tree trunks. Now the heroine is no longer in a forest of vertical, reliable trees, but in a woods where trees might fall on her at any time.

The movement and import of the picture is determined as much by the spaces between the shapes as by the shapes themselves.

It means that any picture that emphasizes the diagonal—whether with shapes or colors or light or any structural element—feels dynamic to us, because the diagonal implies movement or tension.