The Foundations of Composition
A tightly-curated, thematically developed online course using my best YouTube videos to help you build the foundations of composition in your own artistic practice.
Six themes: 24 lessons – each with assignments and reference photos for you to practice
“Your channel has become my Masters of Art teacher. A dream come true for an art student.”
— YouTube viewer
The Foundations of Composition
A tightly-curated, thematically developed online course using my best YouTube videos to help you build the foundations of composition in your own artistic practice.
Six themes: 24 lessons – each with assignments and reference photos for you to practice
“Your channel has become my Masters of Art teacher. A dream come true for an art student.”
— YouTube comment
A Gold Mine Lost in the YouTube Jungle
Over the past seven years, I have built something I hadn’t entirely planned on—a YouTube channel that grew to more than 230,000 subscribers.
I continued to focus the videos on composition because I knew from the sales of my book and having taught thousands of students both in plein air workshops for 25 years and in online courses that artists need this and wanted to hear more about it.
I posted video after video week after week. Each one focussing on composition, design, and how painters learn to see.
I’ve made now over 170 videos. The knowledge is all there, but those videos were made week to week, without a specific structured progression.
It felt like there was a gold mine of knowledge there that was scattered and sort of lost in the YouTube jungle.
Now I’ve put the best of them into a tightly
organized, curated online course.
We went through all 170 videos, including some early gems from years ago, identified the most essential ones for learning composition, and curated them into a tightly organized, six themed course, with each unit building on the last.
The result is six themes, 4 lessons each, with more than 30 videos in all. Each lesson has an assignment and reference photos so you can watch and then apply the ideas as you go.
I’ve also made new introductory videos for each theme to orient you in the progression and put each unit in context.
The Foundations of Composition is now the organized,
permanent form of what I’ve spent years building.
This course is for you if you…
- Want to stop guessing why your paintings aren’t working.
- Start painting with excitement, but often get stuck halfway through.
- Keep adding detail, hoping the painting will come together.
- Aren’t sure whether the problem is color, drawing, value, or composition.
- Have watched my videos and want the most important composition lessons organized in one place.
- Have wanted to paint for years and now finally want to take your practice seriously.
- Want a clear practice path, not another random painting tip.
“Your constant explanation of WHY composition is so important makes me pay attention – and pick up my brushes.” – YouTube viewer
Six Themes to Guarantee Success
The course moves through six foundational themes in a deliberate sequence. Each one develops a specific dimension of how painters see.
Theme 1: What Is Good Composition?
We start with learning the principles that separate a strong composition from a weak one. You will learn what they are, why they work, and how to start recognizing them deliberately in the paintings you admire and applying them in your own.
Video titles for Theme 1
- Engage the Vertical in Your Paintings
- How to Create Design-Driven Paintings
- Seeing the Big Picture, First
- Pull the Viewer IN
Theme 2: Great Reference Photos
Painters don’t take photographs the way tourists do. In the second theme, you’ll learn to see compositional potential in a scene before you shoot it and how to crop and reframe for greater visual drama. These are the decisions that happen before you ever begin painting.
Theme 3: Plan Your Painting
The habit that separates painters who work with intention from those who hope for the best is deciding what you do before you pick up a brush. You’ll learn how a thumbnail actually works in the planning process that then gives you a clear compositional map before you make the first brush mark.
Drawing is not just a technical skill. It is the most direct training available for teaching your eye to see value, mass, and structure rather than objects and outlines. This theme helps you fundamentally rewire how you look at everything around you.
Theme 5: More on Simplifying
What you leave out of a painting matters as much as what you put in.
You’ll develop the discipline to identify what’s essential in a scene and eliminate what isn’t, so your paintings gain drama and impact rather than getting lost in unnecessary detail.
Theme 6: Pulling It All Together
Letting go of the side of the pool, you’ll explore and draw your own images using everything you have learned about composition.
We’ll explore how to find interest and drama in the everyday using sound composition and engaging value masses.
Build paintings with sound compositions and
dramatically improve your painting practice.
Get all 24 lessons of The Foundations of
Composition online course for just $59
Life-time Access
100% Guarantee. If you’re not delighted with the course we’ll give you a full refund. No questions asked.
“All good art is composition.” – Robert Henri, The Art Spirit
But Don’t Just Take it From Me…
Here is What Others Have Said After Watching
My Composition Videos
These are all unsolicited comments made on YouTube. If you go to my YouTube channel you will see literally thousands of similar comments. Average likes: 99.8%
“I enjoy your videos so much Ian. I ALWAYS learn something.”
“Thank you Ian for your focussed, well thought out videos. I share what I learn here with my artist friends frequently.”
“What you’ve just said is probably the best advice I have ever heard.”
“Thank you for offering such sound wisdom. Almost mindblowing in its depth and complex simplicity.”
“Just what I needed to get back to painting. Thank you. Very motivating.”
“You always find a way to explain things so that I understand.”
“Superb presentation. When my students want to KNOW the thing that will make them better painters, we will watch this together.”
“What an incredible teaching style and confident explanation that was so accessible. Truly a legendary educator that could make any subject truly fascinating.”
“Your videos have made a world of difference in how I now approach my artwork.”
“Every week your videos jolt me back to the track of good painting. You show it is worth striving to paint elegant and simple paintings that pack a punch.”
“I really wish when I was in art school more instructors would have spent time teaching us principles like this.”
“Your constant explanation of WHY composition is so important makes me pay attention – and pick up my brushes.”
“Your channel has become my Masters of Art teacher. A dream come true for an art student.”
Frequently Asked Questions
I don't know where to start. Is this the right place?
I've taken workshops and read books on composition. How is this different?
One other difference worth noting is that you won’t find this approach in demonstrations that speed the painting process up, compressing it into five or ten minutes. That format has its place, but it bypasses the careful consideration the artist is actually making, mark by mark. Every lesson here is paced for learning, not for watching.
Will I get feedback from Ian?
Is this for beginners, or do I need painting experience?
The foundational principles here matter at every level. Whether you’re just starting or have been painting for years, you’ll find that this course builds the core skills that are needed for mastery. Most experienced painters who go through this material find they always learn something new when they revisit the fundamentals.
What's the format?
24 video lessons organized into six themes. Each lesson includes an assignment and reference photos so you can practice each principle as you go. Lesson by lesson. You move at your own pace, however you could plan on doing a lesson a week giving you almost six months of study.
How is this different from Ian's YouTube channel?
My YouTube channel has 230,000 subscribers because the videos address the issues that artists really face. This course takes the most essential compositional lessons and arranges them into a deliberate six theme sequence, with assignments and reference photos for each one.
Rather than searching for what to watch, you follow a structured path specifically designed to build your skills progressively. On YouTube, you would have to search, guess, skip around, and decide what matters next.
But within the Foundations of Composition course that path is already laid out for you. You start with what makes a composition strong. Then you learn how to choose better reference photos, plan before you paint, use drawing to train your eye, simplify what you see, and finally bring it all together into your painting process.
What if this isn't right for me?
Our refund policy is simple. If you are not happy with the course, let us know and we’ll refund the full course fee. No questions asked.
What Do You Really Want in an Artistic Practice
Most painters aren’t out to become professional artists. To earn a living from art. You, I imagine, want an artistic practice that feels alive, where you feel you are genuinely progressing, starting to give expression to your own artistic vision, feeling a growing confidence in your abilities, and when people look at your paintings say, “Wow, this is amazing. You’re getting so much better.”
That’s a realistic dream and it’s worth taking seriously. But even a modest dream requires the right foundation. And for most painters (no matter how long you’ve been at it or how much you’ve invested in your learning), that foundation of composition has never been explicitly taught.
Yet The Foundations of Composition course teaches exactly that – learn to build a solid foundation in your paintings consistently. Painting after painting. Nothing will cut through the confusion of how to paint so quickly. So effectively. So efficiently.
Take The Foundations of Composition online course now and start to build a lifelong artistic practice that gives expression to your unique voice as an artist.