---
title: Advanced Composition
description: Advanced composition explores complex visual arrangements and design principles in drawing. Learners will understand dynamic symmetry, focal points, spatial depth, and visual hierarchy to guide a viewer's eye and create sophisticated, balanced, and impactful artistic layouts.
category: arts-design
subcategory: drawing
difficulty: beginner, intermediate, advanced
url: /subject/advanced-composition
---

# Advanced Composition

Advanced composition explores complex visual arrangements and design principles in drawing. Learners will understand dynamic symmetry, focal points, spatial depth, and visual hierarchy to guide a viewer's eye and create sophisticated, balanced, and impactful artistic layouts.

## Available Resources

3 Books • 1 Courses • 2 Websites

## Courses

### 1. Composition Library

Master advanced composition techniques with Matt Kohr's Composition Library! Learn to create compelling art through proven visual principles.

**Difficulty:** Advanced | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://www.ctrlpaint.com/library/#composition

**Tags:** composition, digital-painting, visual-design, value

## Books

### 1. Composition: A Series of Exercises in Art Structure

**Author:** Arthur Wesley Dow

Arthur Wesley Dow's 1899 teaching manual built on graded exercises in line, notan (dark-light massing) and color, drawn from Japanese design principles. Working through it trains you to arrange shapes and values into balanced, unified pictures in any medium.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0692639225?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** books, arts-design, drawing

### 2. Picture This

**Author:** Molly Bang

A short illustrated book that builds a scene from simple cut-paper shapes to show how placement, size, color and angle create emotional effect. Afterwards you can explain why a composition feels calm, tense or threatening, and apply those principles deliberately.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/1587170302?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** books, arts-design, drawing

### 3. Framed Ink

**Author:** Marcos Mateu-Mestre

A storyboard artist's guide to visual narrative for comics, film and illustration, covering framing, camera angle, lighting and value to direct the viewer's eye. It teaches how to design panels and shots that communicate mood and story clearly.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid

**Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/1933492953?tag=edmonddante07-20

**Tags:** books, arts-design, drawing

## Websites

### 1. drawabox.com

Drawabox is a structured drawing fundamentals resource offering free lessons, drills, and assignments that teach basic sketching from lines and shapes, covering construction, perspective, and form. It provides instructional videos and written guides to practice shading and improve accuracy.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://drawabox.com

**Tags:** websites, arts-design, drawing

### 2. line-of-action.com

Line of Action is a free drawing-practice site that provides a pose generator and photo references to help you practice gesture drawing. It offers timed sessions with customizable content—from human figures and hands to faces and animals—so you can build speed and accuracy.

**Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free

**Link:** https://line-of-action.com

**Tags:** websites, arts-design, drawing

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