The Art of Composition: How We See
$358.00
10 in stock
Gaining mastery of composition is a combination of knowing the rules, intuition, and letting the magic happen. While much compositional knowledge is intuitive, learning how to recognize and use spatial principles such as contrast, value, focal points, and directional movement can give you powerful tools that can transform your work.
The lessons in this workshop will ignite and engage the brain to recognize spatial relationships. We will focus on heightening our sensitivity to of the arrangement of shapes and our ability to recognize negative space. Keeping it simple and seeing how a singular form can activate the space around it as it is moved around and modified, will train our eye for better composition, and help us to make decisions about the more complex shapes in our paintings. The last day of the workshop, students can bring in a painting they are working on and implement the lessons into the work, resolving the piece with newly acquired skills.
Monday and Tuesday, November 16 and 17, 2026
9:00 AM – 4:00 PM
Wednesday, November 18, 2026
9:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Studio 1
The lab fee will cover most of the supplies needed for this workshop. Students will be responsible for bringing the supplies they usually work with, including oil or acrylic paint, an assortment of brushes (small, medium), a palette knife, scissors, a glue stick, and mediums. For the final lesson of this course, on day three, please bring a work in progress (painting) that you feel needs to be resolved. Applying the concepts explored in the course, you will problem-solve your individual, unique work.
