Best Articles of 2023 (Top 8)

1. Canon of Design Workbook

Now these aren’t necessarily listed in any specific order of importance, well, all except for this one. The Canon of Design Workbook is one of the best resources you can use to easily learn each design and composition technique. You won’t find it in schools, Universities, or Ateliers. Yep, it’s only found here!

It works through a checklist of 33 techniques and shows some amazing examples. If you have one New Year’s resolution for 2024, it should be to finish this and do all of the exercises. You absolutely will not regret it.

2. Composition Eclipsed by Aesthetic

Next up, we have an interesting article that covers an observation seen in social media…especially in the year 2023. Countless artists seem to prioritize aesthetic over composition. They are searching endlessly for new mediums and ways to apply them, but getting mediocre results.

Some use puzzle pieces to create art, while others swing people upside down and use their hair as a paintbrush. Splattered paint never seems to die either. This hasn’t been a new idea since Jackson Pollack, but contemporary artists try to apply it in ways that they think is revolutionary. It’s not working because they’ve abandoned composition techniques for aesthetic. Be sure to check out the article to see the ridiculous examples. 

3. Identify Your Artistic Style in 3 Easy Steps

If you’re not familiar with artistic style and what it is, you should definitely check out this article. Even if you know what it is, can you easily identify your own? This article will have you digging through your portfolio like nothing else. It did that for me! In fact, I actually show the process of how I weed out nice photos from my portfolio in order to have a stronger artistic style. Go take a look at the ones I ditched!

4. Which Grid is Best for Cinematography?

Yes, this is a question that must be answered! In this article, I compare screenshots and grids to find the best all around dynamic symmetry grid for cinematography. Can you guess which one it is? Do you agree with the final winner? You’ll be able to better decide by looking at the adjusted composition as each screenshot is cropped to a different grid. Some work, others remove too much context. It may inspire you to watch older movies, or crop your movies/photos differently. Fun stuff!

5. Do I Need to Learn Anatomy for My Art?

Come on, we all know the answer to this article. Don’t we? Do we really need to learn anatomy to draw a figure? We’ll discover the answer by analyzing three categories and how the knowledge of anatomy was applied (if any) to various works of art. You’ll even get to download an anatomy cheat sheet I made that identifies some of the most important areas of the female figure to translate into art (**NSFW**).

6. How to Pick the Best Photo of a Series

Can you identify the best photos in a series of your own photos? How about the photos in a series by Annie Leibovitz? It all boils down to the composition! As you read through this article, you’ll see each photo broken down to see how well the composition stands agains the others. We’ll fix certain distractions, try different crops and more. All to discover the absolute best photo of her beautiful series.

7. Prehistoric Cave Paintings: What Can We Learn?

Can we learn from these prehistoric, naive, simplistic drawings? Absolutely! Are they gold or garbage? Did they use any design techniques that have passed down century after century? Check out this article to see how they were the first artists to ever clearly communicate their visual message. 

8. Top 10 Film Photographers

Is there any difference between film and digital photography? Check out this article and see if any of these film photos can be improved if they were digitally created. I think you’d be quite surprised how much these photographers achieved with simple film cameras. It’s all about the composition! These photographers are so good that it’s difficult to pick a favorite. Do you have one?