Composing and Drawing Tip of the Week.

January 4, 2014
Greetings!
 
Every image, every mark we make has a visual pull.  Try this. 
  1. On a blank sheet of white printer paper about four inches from a corner, make a black dot about the size of a pea.  
  2. Look at the paper and try not to look at the dot.   It pulls your eye to it, doesn't it? 
  3. About four inches from the opposite corner, make another black dot the same size.  Look at one without looking at the other.  Do both try to pull your eye to them? 
  4. Exactly between the two dots, draw the letter C about two inches tall.  One dot is now on the outside of curve of the C and the other on the inside.  Which one does your eye want to go to? 

Even if you try to focus on the dot on the outside, your eye keeps being pulled towards the one on the inside.

 

Look at what is happening. The isolation of the first dot along with its contrast to the white paper caused a visual pull that attracts your eye to it. The second dot, also in isolation and equally contrasting, creates an equal pull, making it difficult for your eye to choose one over the other.  The letter C creates a directional force by the nature of its curve, causing your eye to favor the dot it curves towards.

 

That pulling force is a visual lever, a tool we use for balancing our paintings and drawings.  Wherever an image is placed, we use various visual levers or points of tension to distract away from it in order to give the overall  composition equipoise, counter-balancing or off-setting in order to create visual poise. 

Making Haste   Oil on Canvas  2011

 

In the painting above, I have used several visual levers:  see if you can find them all, then go here for the answer

 

Poised to get you thinking, 

Dianne

 

P.S. One definition of poise is freedom from affectation, but it also means ready for action.  Within both these and several other nuances of its meaning, there is always harmony and equilibrium.  

P.P.S.  Visual levers operate by a law of attraction that acts like gravity. More about this next week.

 

 
   
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