COMPOSE

American painter Richard Schmid has an intuitive eye for design. Those of us who know Richard's work never tire of viewing the sam...

We've been taught that 2x2=4.  But that's not all the story:  2x2=1+3 as well. 2x2 also equals 5-9 and 24/6.  It's a matter ...

My favorite segment of the radio show, Performance Today, is the Piano Puzzler .  Pianist and composer, Bruce Adolphe re-writes a famili...

Edges are boundaries that form shapes.  One of the most powerful tools artists have available is the ability to suggest these boundaries...

Does every painting need a focal point? Not always, say some professionals, but others consider it an absolute requirement. In fact, man...

Those of us fortunate enough recently to have experienced the total eclipse of the sun felt the awe of its light contracting, disappeari...

To begin with, I dislike using the word "scheme" when discussing anything art related. Bad behavior of humans have given the w...

If I tell you that in your painting your occlusion shadows are missing, would you know what I'm saying?  We talk a lot about...

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...