
Study guide
Composition
A short course on composition in painting.
How painters arrange a picture: the frame, shapes and values, balance and structure, movement and depth, and how it all holds together. Concept pages explain one idea, mostly with plates from two old public-domain books on composition (Arthur Wesley Dow, 1914; Henry R. Poore, about 1915); example pages show it in a public-domain work.
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- Most concept images are plates from Dow's Composition (1914) and Poore's Pictorial Composition (about 1915), both public domain; one diagram was made for this site; the artworks are public domain. Sources are listed under Image credits.
Contents
Image: Project Gutenberg · Public domain