Scale is the relative size of elements within a picture, and also the size of the picture itself in relation to the viewer’s body.
Internal scale is what makes a figure read as monumental or miniature against its surroundings — a small head against a vast sky, a giant hand crowding a tiny room. External scale is the actual dimensions of the work: a six-foot canvas and a postcard make different demands on attention even when the image is the same. Descriptions often distinguish pictorial scale (what is large within the image) from physical scale (what is large as an object). A shift in scale — abrupt, exaggerated, or off-key — is one of the most reliable ways a picture produces strangeness, since it disturbs the body’s expectation of how big things should be.
See also
- composition — the arrangement scale operates within
- framing — the edges that establish scale relations
- mass — the visual weight that scale modulates