Composition by Arthur Wesley Dow

Composition by Arthur Wesley Dow

I picked this book up after reading a biography on Georgia O’Keeffe, In Full Bloom. As a fan of her work, I was interested in learning the principles taught by one of Georgia O’Keeffe’s influential instructors, A.W. Dow.

I love this book for its simple and thoughtful exercises. I sometimes work through the different lessons and I always came away with a new understanding of how to apply the concepts to my work.

This book is a reprint of the original book used, and I found the VERY long introduction a bit tedious, so I just skipped to the original chapters that Arthur Wesley Dow actually wrote and compiled. The graphics are mainly black and white and are rather rudimentary, but the concepts are well taught. And I believe the ideas are still helpful for artists today.