Tip: The Quadrant Test

In Margot Schulzke's book "A Painter's Guide to Design and Composition", she suggests that a good check for a successful composition is "The Quadrant Test". The idea is that you divide your painting into four equal parts and then examine each quadrant to ensure that it is interesting on its own, apart from the rest of the painting.

Take Clark Mitchell's pastel entitled "Cataract's Roar" for example. The overall picture is striking but does it pass Margot's quadrant test? To see we must examine each quadrant independently. Here are the first and second quadrants. What do you think?

Here are the last two quadrants. Do they work as well as the first two? Margot says, "While every planting needs quiet space for the eye to rest, too much 'dead' space in any direction is, well deadly."

To my eye, each quadrant has enough going on to keep my interest. Perhaps that is one of the reasons that the overall composition works so well.