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Let’s talk about COMPOSITION! Yeah!

Have you ever noticed that some compositions feel awkward, while others just seem to flow? There are many strategies for creating interesting and easy-to-read compositions. In order to keep from writing a super long, rambling post, I’ll stick to discussing only one method for today. When a composition really isn’t working, sometimes I like to turn to math: the Golden Ratio.

The Golden Ratio is a geometric relationship that you probably learned about in high school, where the ratio of two quantities to each other is the same as the larger quantity’s ratio to the sum of the two quantities. That can sound a bit confusing when you write it out in English words, but it’s actually incredibly simple when you see it drawn. I’ll refer you to this informative Ted Talk about Fibonacci numbers. If you create a sequence of boxes using the Golden ratio, you get a spiral:

Image via the Wikimedia Commons

The Golden Ratio/Golden Spiral is ubiquitous in nature: it shows up in sunflowers, shells, the shape of your ears, the proportions of your body, and the form of galaxies and hurricanes. I could go on and on. The Golden Spiral also happens be a handy tool for creating interesting compositions. Sometimes all it takes are a few tweaks–moving something to the left, lining a few key elements up, to take your composition from “meh” to “aah.” This isn’t a new concept. Artists have been using the golden ratio pretty much ever since it was discovered.

As much fun as I have playing with the composition of my illustrations, I also have to remember that each image is NOT a work of art in and of itself. The book needed to work as a whole, so it was also important to find harmony between the pages as well. This is where my editor and art director were invaluable, never losing sight of the project in its entirety, and keeping me from getting too attached to compositions that were not quite right for the flow of the story. (And also making sure I kept enough space for the text to be placed.) I made several physical dummy books myself so that I could experience the page turn and see the images together in sequence.

If you have another favorite method for finding interesting compositions, I want to hear! Let me know in the comments.

Coming up next: The Devil’s in the Details

Other posts in the series:

• Part 1 – Getting Started
• Part 2 – Finding Harmony
• Part 3 – Devil’s in the Details
• Part 4 – Adding the Magic
• Part 5 – Painting with Guts

Growing Patterns: Fibonacci Numbers in Nature
By Sarah C. Campbell
Photographs by Sarah C. Campbell and Richard P. Campbell
Boyds Mills Press
$17.95
ISBN: 978-1-59078-752-6
Ages 6 and up
On shelves now.

One of the more interesting requests I receive at my library’s reference desk comes from parents seeking math books for their kids. Generally speaking, they don’t want math textbooks or worksheets of math problems. No, they want books in a picture book format that incorporate math in some original manner. Now it is fortunate that there are a slew of such books out there. You can find them in any good children’s library if you know where to look and with the right teacher or parent, such books can make concepts like fractions or division or subtraction make perfect sense. Fibonacci numbers are a little trickier. Unlike addition or multiplication they are difficult to show to kids as having practical applications in real life. You could discuss how Fibonacci numbers apply to music, but that’s still tricky territory. Nature, however, is a natural complement. Kids understand flowers. Kids can understand duplicating numbers. Put the two together and you’ve the newest picture book format math book to add to your shelves. It does contain a couple difficult concepts, but with the right grown-up by their side, there’s very little in Growing Patterns: Fibonacci Numbers in Nature that a child won’t be able to figure out on their own.

Take a look at these flowers and count the petals you see. One. Two. Three. Five. Eight. Notice anything? These petal numbers add on to one another. One plus two equals three. Two plus three equals five. These numbers are called Fibonacci numbers, and what’s crazy is that as they go they keep showing up in nature and it’s not just in flowers either. If you count spirals on pinecones or sunflowers or pineapples, no matter how you look at them they equal one of these numbers. With brilliant bright photography and simple words, Sarah and Richard Campbell make a math concept understandable. A section on “More About Fibonacci Numbers” and a Glossary of terms appear at the end.

It may sound as if this is a fairly simple and straightforward concept, but how do you write an entire book about duplicating numbers found in nature for youngsters? The Campbells have opted for starting out easy and getting slowly more complicated as the book goes on. So at the start the child reader is handed a really easy idea. They look at pictures and count the petals. By the time they get to the eight petals on the cosmos they learn about doubling the numbers and we see the same flowers all over again. Then the numbers get higher. The ideas get harder. It’s clear that some adult help may be needed to explain along the way.

I suppose the real question here is whether or not kids are gonna get all the concepts the book is throwing out. At the start it’s pretty clear but when it starts getting into counting the number of spirals, that’s when things begin to get wonky. You have to realize that spirals on pinecones and sunflowers and pineapples can go a variety of different ways. What would be fun is if grown-ups turn it into a game. What if you bought a pineapple and had the kids identify the spirals and then count them? That’s pretty cool. Of course then you start getting into the golden spiral concept and that gets kind of complicated. And, of course, if your child attempts to understand The Golden Ratio explanation at the end of the title, sign that kid up f

GROWING PATTERNS: FIBONACCI NUMBERS IN NATURE, by Sarah C. Campbell, photographs by Sarah C. Campbell and Richard P. Campbell (Boyds Mills Press 2010)(ages 5-11). This elegant picture book introduces the Fibonacci sequence (1+1+2+3+5+8+13+21+...)(each number in the sequence is the sum of the two previous numbers) through photographs of flowers and simple counting exercises. An afterword and glossary should pique the interest of anyone interested in numbers or nature.

BLOCKHEAD: THE LIFE OF FIBONACCI, by Joseph D'Agnese, ill. by John O'Brien (Henry Holt 2010)(ages 6-9). This fun and highly-fictionalized account of the life Fibonacci ranges from a childhood in which he had difficulties in school through an adulthood of travels and curiosity. Both text and pictures are lively and provide an entertaining tale of how Fibonacci (may have) discovered the sequence that bears his name.