8 | COMPOSITION
Mastering Composition: principles and rules
Richard Garvey-Williams reveals the secrets of composition in this series of extracts from his new book
PART 2 OF 4
Part 3 in issue 298, on sale 15 August
The position of this lady is on the right-hand rabatment of the rectangle.
Richard Garvey-Williams
1
Rabatment of the rectangle
This is a simple compositional technique used as an aid for the placement of objects or the division of space within a rectangular frame. The principle is that every rectangle contains two implied squares based on the short sides of the rectangle.
The process of mentally rotating the short sides onto the long ones is called rabatment and often the imaginary fourth line that is created producing each square is called the rabatment.