How to Immediately Improve Your Work with the One Rule of Composition

By Greg Albert

Whether you are a beginner or a professional, composition is one of the greatest and most fundamental challenges an artist faces. Start your painting with a strong composition and odds are high your painting will sing. But lessons learned from The Simple Secret to Better Painting don’t stop at basic composition; they also apply to color, shapes, and tonal values.

In this concise, comprehensive work, author, artist, and educator Greg Albert reveals the simple keys to unlock the door to better paintings. In his own words, “applied consistently, one rule of composition will eliminate all the most subtle design flaws. The ONE RULE is: Never make any two intervals the same.” These intervals may include distance between lines, gradation of color, tonal value, and shapes.

Drawing on decades of teaching experience, Albert breaks down the process into topics such as finding balance and focal point, tonal value, color, and visual appeal, and also includes chapters on still life, portraits, and landscape. He reinforces these lessons with examples from beginners and master painters, including Charles Reid, Tony Van Hasselt, Kevin Macpherson, Tony Couch, and Frank Webb.

Once fully understood, the basic concepts in this book will help you solve all composition and related challenges and create stronger paintings from start to finish. The lessons learned can also be applied to abstract art and other mediums including sculpture or collages. They will also improve your understanding and appreciation when viewing and critiquing art.

The Simple Secret to Better Painting is an invaluable resource and foundational guide for artists of all levels and mediums wishing to learn an essential and deeply-grounded understanding which will make their art really work.

Page Count: 128

ISBN:

9781635619720 (Hardcover)

9781635619737 (Paperback)