How does an artist achieve the illusion of 3 dimensional space on the 2 dimensional surface of your paper? We call it “Composition”.
Composition is the arrangement of the elements in an image into specific proportions and into artistic form. Placement and arrangement of these visual elements is achieved by using conscious thought on the part of the artist.
Space is broken into 3 parts; foreground, middle ground, and background. Lets look at a Landscape as our example. The foreground is the part of a view that appears nearest to the observer, the water. The middle ground is in the middle distance, and usually closer to the horizon, the mounds. And finally, the background is the part of the view that is farthest away from the viewer, the mountains.
Other tricks that we will be discussing later to help with the illusion of space are size, placement, overlapping, and perspective.