For the past several months I’ve been developing and posting a weekly video on youtube.

The subject: composition in painting.

Like composition in writing or music, in painting it forms the structure, or armature, underlying the image.

The color shapes of the painting, cloak that structure. So we feel the structure, we feel its organizing role, even if we can’t necessarily see it.

The artist’s canvas or paper, their picture plane, becomes their playing field. For myself, as a painter, I want that playing field alive and dynamic.

That means as I plan a painting I think more in terms of it being design-driven rather than subject-driven. The painting obviously has a subject, we see trees, and hills, and so on, but they are in service of the design.

Compositional structure has been on my mind for a long time. I wrote a book Mastering Composition over a decade ago, it’s sold over 45,000 copies and is still going strong. But in workshop after workshop since then I have kept refining my thoughts on it.

So that led me to start the youtube video series. I try and keep each video at around 6-7 minutes.

Here’s one of the first. I’ve improved the sound as the weeks have gone by.

Let me know what you think.

Best wishes

Ian

P.S. If the series seems interesting to you please click here and you will receive the free weekly video each Tuesday.