B. Reflecting, Responding, and Analysing · Responding to Art: Critical Analysis, Context and Responsible Practice

Conventions in Visual Art: Space, Composition, Genre and Culture

C2.2About 75 minutes

Learning goals

I can explain what a convention is and why conventions are cultural.
I can identify conventions for showing space, including linear perspective.
I can identify compositional, genre and comic conventions.
I can explain how and why artists break conventions.

Words to know

convention
A widely accepted way of doing something in art, shared by artists and viewers.

linear perspective
A system for showing depth in which parallel lines meet at vanishing points on the horizon line.

vanishing point
The point on the horizon line where receding parallel lines meet.

rule of thirds
A compositional guideline that places key elements on lines or intersections dividing the picture into thirds.

hierarchical scale
Showing more important figures larger than less important ones.

atmospheric perspective
Making distant objects paler, bluer and less detailed to show depth.

Cubism
An art movement begun by Picasso and Braque around 1907 that showed objects from several viewpoints at once.

Hook: the rules everyone knows

If you see three stacked panels with speech balloons, you know instantly to read them left to right. If you see two lines narrowing to a point, you read it as a road going into the distance. Nobody had to tell you. You learned these conventions by seeing them over and over.

C2.2 asks you to understand the conventions used in visual art works: what they are, where they come from, and how artists use and break them.

What is a convention?

A convention is a widely accepted way of doing something in art, a shared "agreement" between artists and viewers about how images communicate. Conventions are learned and cultural: different times and places have different ones.

Four big families of conventions:

Conventions for showing space on a flat surface.
Compositional conventions for arranging a picture.
Genre and form conventions (portrait, landscape, still life, comics).
Cultural and stylistic conventions that belong to particular traditions.

(Techniques, such as shading or blending, are the how-to skills taught in the Creating and Presenting unit. Conventions are the shared agreements those techniques are often used to follow.)

1. Showing space

Painters have several conventions for making a flat picture look deep:

Overlapping: a shape in front of another seems closer.
Size: things farther away are drawn smaller.
Placement: things higher on the page (closer to the horizon) seem farther away.
Atmospheric perspective: distant things are paler, bluer, less detailed.
Linear perspective: parallel lines (road edges, rails, rooftops) are drawn to meet at a vanishing point on the horizon line (eye level). Artists in Renaissance Florence developed this system in the early 1400s.

In one-point perspective, the road edges, the centre line and the tops and bases of the poles all meet at a single vanishing point on the horizon line. Poles get shorter and closer together as they recede.

2. Compositional conventions

Rule of thirds: imagine the picture divided into thirds both ways. Placing the horizon on a third line and key subjects on or near the intersections often feels more dynamic than centring everything.
Leading lines: roads, rivers, fences and arms guide the eye to the focal point.
Framing: a doorway, window or branches around the subject frame it.
Negative space: empty areas around a subject give it room to "breathe".

Rule of thirds compared with centring. Neither is "wrong", but they create different effects.

3. Genre and form conventions

Portrait: usually vertical format; head and shoulders or full figure; often a three-quarter view; eyes are a strong focal point.
Landscape: usually horizontal format (that's why the computer setting is called "landscape"); foreground, middle ground, background.
Still life: arranged objects (fruit, flowers, everyday items) with a single light source to show form.
Comics and graphic novels: panels, gutters (gaps between panels), speech balloons, thought bubbles, caption boxes, motion lines and sound effects; in English-language comics you read left to right, top to bottom. (Japanese manga reads right to left: a different convention!)

Comic conventions: speech balloons with tails, thought bubbles, motion lines, caption boxes and sound effects.

4. Cultural and stylistic conventions

Ancient Egypt: figures shown with the head and legs in profile but the eye and shoulders from the front (a composite view), and hierarchical scale: the most important person is drawn largest.
Northwest Coast formline art (for example, Haida art): a system of flowing lines and shapes, such as ovoids and U-forms, governed by rules that Northwest Coast artists learn and pass on. These conventions are part of living cultures and belong to the Nations who carry them.
Japanese ukiyo-e prints: flat areas of colour, strong outlines, high viewpoints and dramatic cropping.
Exhibition labels: artist's name, title (in italics), date, medium, and dimensions (height × width, in cm), for example: Tom Thomson, The West Wind, 1916–17, oil on canvas.

Breaking conventions

Many important artists became famous by breaking conventions on purpose. In Paris around 1907 to 1914, Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque developed Cubism, showing objects from several viewpoints at once instead of one-point perspective. The Impressionists broke the convention that a painting should look smooth and "finished". To break a convention effectively, you first need to know it.

Worked example

Let's identify conventions

Name the convention(s) in each situation.

A painting shows distant mountains pale blue, with fuzzy edges: atmospheric perspective.
A photo puts the horizon one-third from the top and a canoe at the lower-right intersection: rule of thirds.
An ancient Egyptian wall painting shows a king twice as tall as his servants: hierarchical scale.
A comic shows a jagged balloon with "CRASH!": a sound effect (with a shape showing loudness).
A drawing of a school hallway with lockers getting smaller toward one point: one-point linear perspective.
A painting shows a guitar from the front and side at once, in broken shapes: breaking the perspective convention, as in Cubism.

Recognizing conventions helps you read art faster and choose (or break) them deliberately in your own work.

Just for fun

Funny but true: in perspective drawings, railway tracks always meet at the horizon. Train engineers are very glad this is only a drawing convention.

Hands-on activity

Convention scavenger hunt

You need: paper, a pencil, a ruler, and a camera or phone (optional), plus comics, magazines or picture books from home or the library.

Find and sketch (or photograph) an example of five conventions: overlapping, linear perspective, rule of thirds, a comic convention, and a genre convention (portrait, landscape or still life).
Perspective drawing: using a ruler, draw a one-point perspective hallway or road. Mark the horizon line and vanishing point first, then draw every receding line to that point.
Rule of thirds photo: photograph a houseplant, pet or toy twice: once centred, once on a thirds intersection. Which is more interesting? Why?
Break a convention: draw a simple object (a mug) in a Cubist way, from two or three viewpoints at once. Write one sentence on the effect.

Your turn

What is a convention in visual art?

List four conventions for showing space.

In linear perspective, where is the vanishing point?

Describe the rule of thirds.

Name three comic conventions.

What is hierarchical scale?

Write a correct label for Lawren Harris's North Shore, Lake Superior (1926), oil on canvas.

More practice: warm-up

Which format is a portrait usually: vertical or horizontal?

What are the gaps between comic panels called?

Which art movement showed objects from several viewpoints at once?

Distant hills drawn paler and bluer use which convention?

In what direction is Japanese manga traditionally read?

More practice: on your own

Why are conventions described as cultural?

In the perspective diagram, why do the poles get shorter as they go back?

Explain why a photographer might break the rule of thirds and centre the subject.

Why should non-Haida artists not copy Haida formline designs?

Compare how Egyptian art and Renaissance art show importance and space.

Challenge

Why might Picasso and Braque have wanted to break perspective conventions in the early 1900s?

Draw (or describe) a two-point perspective box. Where are the vanishing points?

Design a comic page of three panels that uses at least five conventions. List them.

Check your understanding

Quiz

In one-point perspective, parallel lines going into the distance...

Showing the most important person largest is called...

Which is a compositional convention?

Which is a comic convention?

Cubism broke the convention of...

Distant mountains painted paler and bluer show...

For parents and teachers

Big idea: C2.2 asks students to demonstrate an understanding of conventions used in visual art works. Conventions are shared, learned and cultural, and artists can choose to follow or break them.

How to help: Look at comics, photos and paintings together and name the conventions. For the perspective drawing, make sure every receding line actually reaches the vanishing point (use a ruler).

Common difficulties: mixing up conventions (shared agreements) with techniques (skills); placing the vanishing point off the horizon line; thinking conventions are rules that can never be broken.