COMPOSE

The famous Polish pianist and composer, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, is known for saying, "If I miss one day of practice, I notice it. If...

Thirty spokes converge on a hub The space between them Make the wheel work... Translation of lines from Verse 11, Tao Te Ching by ...

Are you able to guess what these three excerpts from a painting might be describing? What if I told you they are all d...

​​​​​​​  If you buy a new car, one question you'll get is "what color is it?".  The lay person will identify color by a s...

Here is something we see quite often these days, thanks to lighting designers' awareness of the color temperature from light sources...

Have you heard of alternation? A rarely discussed design tool, alternation can sometimes be the very method you need for moving the view...

Often artists complain about their colors feeling dull or dirty and are at a loss as to what to do about it.   Dirty color is easily cor...

No single color can be muddy. Mud happens in relationship to surrounding colors. If a vocalist sings a flat note or a guitar string is o...

Below are azaleas from the same area of the bush, but under different colors of light.  Those on the left are on my dining table and on ...

What are these colors? If your answers are mauve, tan,and olive green, you are not speaking the color language .  ...

Our moon can help us understand the language we use when looking for halftones. We don't see it in a full moon, but it...

​​​​​​​ In the visual arts world, there is a lot of confusion about halftones. Halftones are found wherever images are illumina...

Look at this abstract composition.  Notice that all the shapes' edges are sharp.  How our eyes move over the piece is determined mor...

An edge in a painting is like a pause between two musical phrases:  it marks the ending of one shape and the beginning of another. The t...

How do you paint a tree?  That's a generic question painting teachers get all the time.  Books are written and videos made on How To...