092307 Artist Kenneth John KEN
close your eyes. open them and what is the first thing you see? no, this is not a psychology exam, but a practice to see where your viewer eyes are going when they first look at your art. their/your eyes are going to be attracted to the highest contrast. but contrast isn't unique only to value, light/shade, black/white. you can have contrast of warm/cool colors, size and proportion of shapes, color schemes, directional pointers, etc.
what i am getting at is that you need to control your viewer's eyes in the overall composition of your paintings and in graphic design work. this is called rhythm flow. you want there eyes to go to the first object, then the next and ultimately back to the original contrast so they have viewed and scan the whole painting or graphic. otherwise they just jump around the canvas or picture plane with a big ????
where to place the first contrast? generally speaking, as an art rule goes, make a tic tac toe on your picture plane, the 4 places where the lines cross is usually the best place for it.
in my painting below, i have the viewer looking at the crashing wave first (value contrast), then it flows to the sunset (warm-cool contrast), moving left to the edge, then down to the bottom rocks (shape and value contrast), follows the shoreline(directional pointer) to the next set of rocks, then back to the wave breaking. after that first impression, then the viewer will look at all the other areas, such as the sky overall or the hills in the background, the shore reflections and other details.
