Artists' Use of Compositional Balance for Creating Visual Displays

Abstract

This study sought empirical evidence that balance influences the way adults trained in the visual arts create visual displays. Thirty-two volunteers made four designs each using two different types of shapes (rectangles or quadrilaterals) within two types of pictorial fields (a circular or rectangular format). A videotape recording of the development of each design from start to completion was used to create a digitized record of its image at 20 percent intervals of the time taken for completion. It was found that, regardless of element type, format, or phase of construction, the center of a design was closely aligned with the geometric center of the pictorial field. Furthermore, the structural or physical weight of the compositional elements measured quantitatively was evenly distributed (balanced) about the principal axes of the designs throughout their construction. These findings demonstrate the power of the center of a circular and rectangular field to function as an “anchor” or balancing point about which a design's structural skeleton is organized by artists.