Like any play or film, a picture must be put together so that its component parts make a balanced, harmonious whole to hold the attention of the viewer. It is the blueprint for a painting or the composition. Good composition is achieved when all elements of the picture relate to each other in a balanced way.

The artist will design a focal point, which the viewer’s eye tends to be drawn most strongly and these focal points may be mathematically predetermined.

In more complex images no one element is more important than another, so the artist has to guide the viewer’s eye “around and sometimes into the picture”; by the way the elements are arranged.

A famous painting by Salvador Dali, The Hallucinogenic
Toreador is a perfect example of this. The focal point is the statue or statues of Venus, but the artist draws the viewer into the painting when he creates a right brain shift as the Toreador appears in the middle of the statues. The artist then guides the viewer’s eye around the picture illustrating the objects and symbolism.