Robert Brown Butler

This eye-opening inquiry innovatively describes the elements of visual composition in a manner that is simple to grasp and encompasses the full range of visual phenomena. Its perceptual bedrock, firm as the physiology of your eyes, is that it describes nearly 60 visual axioms as crisply as theorems in a geometry book, and its examples include some of the finest art ever created. It is for anyone who is an artist, who works with artists, who simply enjoys looking at pretty pictures —and classrooms everywhere. As such this ocular adventure, in addition to inspiring visual aficionados of every kind, is a practical instrument that can increase your productive thinking in many ways, it can foster the important business of daily life, and it fulfills an established need in the affairs of society.

The book's seven chapters are:

1.     Compose an area according to PERCEPTUAL LAWS OF COMPOSITION.

2.     Create the illusion of depth on a flat surface with MONOCULAR DEPTH CUES.

3.     Create the illusion of movement on a static surface with LINEAR MOTION CUES.

4.     Liven a composition with CONTRASTS OF COLOR.

5.     Compose a scene in terms of a particular ARTISTIC STYLE.

6.     Dramatize a subject's nature with methods of  VISUAL ELOCUTION.

7.     Challenge conventional concepts of reality with VISUAL TRICKS.