Photoshop

The composition lines of Sachin Teng map out visual language to communicate ideas and stories throughout her artwork

Composition is visual storytelling in its most concise form, reduced to its most simple geometry. How do you express longing or grief without words or facial expressions? How do you convey motion and rhythm without movement?

Composition is your macro storytelling. Simple shape and colour are sculpted into your leading lines, as they’re called in photography, also known as radiating lines within the painting world.

These are edges, formed by things like perspective lines, silhouettes and intersections, that guide the eye through the canvas and provide flow and momentum moulded to create and reinforce different emotions and actions. Highly organised and symmetrical radiating lines result in a rigid but powerful mood. Frantic and wavy radiating lines might create a chaotic, flowing style. Your method is dependent on your intent.