Edgar Payne’s book Composition of Outdoor Painting contains a series of black and white marker drawing with different compositional elements arranged. I spent some time this summer looking at, re-drawing, and organizing his small composition drawings. Then I added to that with comparing the compositions in various reference photos and photos from my travels to see how compositions were arranged. I have multiple pages of my own small sketches with different elements organized within each. I’m finding that just devoting some consistent effort to the study of composition is improving my paintings overall. It’s also making them more consistent, and makes it easier for me to naturally identify compositions I like within the natural world as I’m seeing painting locations.