How Images Draw the Eye: An Eye-Tracking Study of Composition

In his instructional art book, Andrew Loomis provides images and corresponding diagrams that indicate how the composition of the image should guide the viewer's eye. Using these images, we examined whether participants would follow the suggested cues. Participants' eyes were tracked as they viewed the images, allowing us to take measures of where they entered and exited the image, whether they attended to the focal part of the image, and what path they followed between these components. These measures could then be compared with Loomis' suggestions, to determine if the elements did indeed have the proposed influence. While viewers were attracted to the focal points, and spent the most time examining these, they did not use the entry and exit points marked by Loomis, and the suggested viewing paths were not closely followed. It appears that Loomis' suggested elements of composition do not strongly influence viewers' eye movements.