Introducing Composition Field Notes: A Practical Pocket Guide for Painters

Most painting problems are decided before a brush ever touches the canvas.
When a piece goes wrong, we tend to blame our colour mixing, our paint application, or the lighting. But nine times out of ten, the culprit is far simpler: the composition was shaky from the start. Now there is a practical solution.

Over the years, I’ve noticed that when artists struggle outdoors or in the studio, they don’t need another dense, three-hundred-page academic tome dissecting mathematical grid formulas. When you're standing in front of an easel watching the light rapidly shift across a field, you don't have time to wade through art theory.
You need practical, direct answers.

That is why I wrote Composition Field Notes. Built for the Field, Not Just the Shelf. This is deliberately a concise book. It is stripped of filler, trend-chasing concepts, and unnecessary jargon. Instead, it gathers the core observational principles and composition habits I rely on every single day in my own painting practice.

Inside, you will find:

• Clear, actionable principles on value structure, massing, and focal points that give an image immediate strength.
• Troubleshooting cues to help you diagnose why a design feels cluttered, stagnant, or unbalanced before you waste hours detailing it.
• Practical mindset shifts that keep your visual storytelling simple, bold, and readable.

I specifically designed the paperback edition with working painters in mind. It is lightweight, compact, and built to take a beating. It’s meant to live in your backpack, your pochade box, or the glove compartment of your car—ready to pull out when you’re standing in a field or setting up along a riverbank, trying to decide where to place your horizon line. As a last resort, it will come in handy to see off those pesky bugs that seek to interrupt your outdoor painting.

You can dog-ear the pages, make your own notes in the margins, and treat it as a working tool rather than an ornament for your coffee table. 

Ground Your Fundamentals:
Good composition is rarely about inventing complex tricks; it is about eliminating clutter so the light, the shapes, and the subject can speak clearly. Once the underlying design is solid, everything else—colour harmony, mark-making, and atmospheric depth—falls into place with far less effort.

Whether you paint plein air in oil, sketch with gouache, or work quietly in a home studio, my hope is that these notes serve as a calm, reliable companion whenever you need a quick reset at the easel.
Composition Field Notes is available now in paperback and digital formats.

Grab a copy, toss it into your kit, and let’s get out there and paint.
Order Your Copy of Composition Field Notes Here