Tip 3: Unify elements

As we become unable to discern the differences between the individual elements of a distant mass, the shape of the whole becomes more important.

Here the aim is to mass together distant areas of an image into simple shapes. Just as the coloured dots in a pointillist painting mix optically as we stand back from them, colours and patterns which might have had individual identity up close become unified into shapes at a distance.

We see the same device regularly employed in comic strips and graphic novels, with figures standing just behind a main character simplified into shapes of colour and the buildings and trees of the background unified into a single shape of skyline or forest.