Emphasis and Hierarchy – A Dynamic Duo
January 31, 2021
Design lessons
So, here we are, finally, at the last lesson in the design series I started last February. Although it has taken a year to go through everything, I thought was important for polymer and mixed media creatives to know about design, it will still take some time to master this stuff. So, don’t worry if you feel like you haven’t been able to soak it all in. Just stick with me and, over the coming months, we’ll have a grand old time reviewing and renewing that information so that, by a nearly effortless process of knowledge osmosis, you will continue to learn until it becomes second nature.
Our last lesson is about a pair of concepts that, like the contrast and variety concepts we talked about the previous couple of weeks, you actually already know. Well, you certainly should find them familiar if you’ve been keeping up with the lessons this past year.
They are the principles of Emphasis and Hierarchy. Both lean heavily on the Elements of Design and the other Principles of Design in order to work and have actually been part of our conversation on and off this whole year. So, the goal this week is to just bring them into focus so you have a clear understanding of how they work and why you use them. But first, let’s see what you recall.
What would you say emphasis is about? Well, if you said it’s about the thing that stands out, that is noticed first, or that could be thought of as the focal point in a piece, then yeah, you got this!
What do you look at first in the Laurie Mika piece above? It’s probably the face although you may register the red heart first. We normally just can’t help but examine a face before all else but the bright red among the relative neutrality of the metallics really puts up a fight for center stage.
If I ask you about hierarchy, and you start thinking about kings and queens or the political order of government, well, those are different subjects but it’s the same basic concept whether we’re talking about art or aristocracies. So, you have some basic knowledge about the concept of hierarchy as well.
You see, you’ve come to this lesson quite well prepared!
Of Power and Priorities
The role of emphasis and hierarchy are quite different even though they work hand-in-hand. Understanding these differences will help you create useful and engaging hierarchies while helping you to position your emphasis accordingly.
Let’s talk about what emphasis is and isn’t first. Emphasis, in its most important artistic role, is about drawing the viewer to a primary subject or the primary section of your piece, often referred to as the focal point. The focal point is usually imbued with the core or starting point of the subject matter, is a key representative of the concepts being explored, or epitomizes your aesthetic in a concise or introductory fashion. Everything else in the design will commonly work in support of that important element or section or will build off of it. The focal point is also generally the top element in the hierarchy.
The primary emphasis does not need to be dramatic or obvious. Carol Beal’s painted polymer pendants don’t have a focal “point” but more of a focal area in each of these pendants. Those areas are the ones that have the highest energy. In both cases it is about a quarter to one-third of the way down where the gold flecks are collected because the gold contrasts with the other colors and the finish of the paint but also because they appear to be layered on top, bringing them visually forward.
But emphasis is about more than just the focal point. Otherwise, why wouldn’t we just call it the focal point? Emphasis is comparative and relative.
You’ll see that in a hierarchy among secondary focal points or other sections. We often decide to give these parts variety or contrast and, in the process, some parts in a piece will stand out more than others. Our interpretation that some parts are more important than others is a comparative process as we determine their importance in relation to each other. So, the use of the principles of variety and contrast can play double duty by emphasizing or deemphasizing parts, something that you have full control over and can adjust as needed.
And once you start making certain elements appear more emphasized than others, you have created a hierarchy.
So, obviously, hierarchy defines where all the elements in the design fall in its visual pecking order. Unlike aristocracies, however, elements won’t be plotting to kill each other off to become the focal point. (But, gosh, wouldn’t that be a funny show?) But why is developing a hierarchy important?
Well, if you recall from my posts on composition, and especially if you were part of one of the clubs and got my step-by-step method for creating a path for the eye of the viewer, you may recall the concept of “leading the eye”. Those lessons were really about hierarchy as developing different points of interest starting with the main focus and defining additional sections with less and less importance is the definition of hierarchy. It’s tied into the viewers visual path through the piece because the viewer’s gaze will generally move around the composition from what is most important to what is least important, barring any strong directional lines that lead the eye around instead.
Although leading the eye is one of the primary reasons for creating hierarchy, you can do a number of other things with it as well including telling a story, developing a message, or giving the viewer an experience through the exploration and discovery you lead them on.
What do you think Laurie Mika was doing in the opening piece? Our eye goes from heart and face down the skeleton to the words below then up the columns of flowers and back down again. Notice how the flowers are just shapes, de-emphasizing them so they don’t fight with the detailed center elements.
Putting It into Practice
So, if you understand how emphasis works then you can develop hierarchies and if you understand the purpose of hierarchies then you can make intentional decisions about your elements that support these hierarchies.
For instance, let’s say you’ve developed a focal point on a pendant and it’s a red circle sitting at the central position of the Golden ratio. That is an extremely strong color and position so it shouldn’t be hard to create less emphasized secondary parts. But you still have to make the decisions about what those additional parts are and which of those will see more important than the others.
So, let’s say you have three other elements or sections you want to include. What color do you make them? You probably want to avoid red so as not to draw attention away from your focal point. Look to your other principles such as contrast or the characteristics of color that would support your intention to choose the colors for these other sections.
Let’s say you make the other elements various versions of cyan to contrast with the red. Because color has such impact, you won’t be able to create relative emphasis and your hierarchy if you don’t differentiate them with texture, size, proportion, etc.
So maybe you make one of them quite large and triangular and another quite small and circular. Give the large triangle an interesting rough texture and make the small circle smooth. The rough texture will have more energy, not to mention that the triangle is bigger, and therefore it will be noticed sooner than the small circle giving it a higher position in this hierarchy. In fact, the small smooth circle will be noticed last if registered at all because it has so little energy.
But what about that third section or element? If you make it of a medium-size, triangular or square so it is angular (angularity has more energy and feels more forceful than circles), with little to no texture, it will have subdued energy compared to the large triangle but will have a lot more going on than the small smooth circle. That way it should be the third thing noticed in the design.
Now, arrange these items so the viewers eye travels around the canvas in a manner that fulfills your intention. You’ll may to harken back to the lesson on line to really drive home how the arrangement can affect the feeling the viewer has about your work.
If you arrange this hierarchy in a straight line, from focal point to least emphasized element, it is going to feel very strong and fast. If it flows in a circle around the composition that will give it a much slower pace and one that is comfortable and inviting, as curvilinear lines generally are. If you arrange them so the viewer has to bounce back and forth across the canvas of the composition to look at the elements in their hierarchical order, it’s going to feel like a zigzag with more frenetic energy than the other options I just mentioned.
Are you starting to see how all this stuff works together?
Looking for Emphasis
I want to leave you with those ideas for now but I challenge you to start looking at the artwork of others and asking yourself where the emphasis is and what hierarchy has been established. See if you can recognize how it affects the way you view the piece and what you get out of it. Then, start doing looking at your own work the same way.
We will be looking more at hierarchy and emphasis in the coming weeks and then I will start circling back around to review the design lessons of the past year. In fact, although I did say I was probably going to do the blog every other week, I miss you all too much already and I’ve decided that I’m going to continue to write something for you weekly so we can continue to spend a little bit of our Sundays together. Some of the posts might be short but I should be able to get something out every week without it interfering with my personal projects. Sound good?
So, until next week, have a wonderful creative start to your February.
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A Variety Show
January 24, 2021
Design lessons
Last weekend I talked about contrast, a concept closely related to variety, which is the subject for this week. Understanding the difference between the two can avoid a lot of confusion so I’ll be referring to contrast a bit today as well. If you didn’t see the last post, give it a quick read here.
Now, what is variation?
Variation is the range or assortment of differences throughout a design. Now, didn’t contrast also speak to differences? Yes, but those differences were between similar types of elements while variation is the degree of difference between all of the elements, principles, and placement choices in your work. It is like contrast in that variation is also used to create interest or energy or to otherwise support your intention, however, while contrast is often the key to adjusting the level of variation, you can have a fair bit of variation with little or no contrast.
To put it succinctly, contrast is the difference between two or more related elements while variety is about the relationship between all the elements in a piece. So, let’s talk about those relationships and how they are used in design.
Picturing Variation
First of all, keep in mind that you can create variation with elements or principles or pretty much any visual or conceptual part of your work.
Take the gorgeous pendant that opened this post. Liz Sabol has variation in color, line, balance, repetition, rhythm and even types of composition. In fact, even though we can identify a use of the Rule of Thirds, a Golden Spiral, and use of the Focus to the Right principle, it’s the barely-there nod to centered composition, created by an implied line from the midpoint focused, and yet asymmetrical, balance of the bail to the centered tip at the bottom of the pendant, that is holding all the chaos at bay. This piece is an absolute celebration of variation.
Alternately, if you use a lot of the same elements or employ principles in the same way throughout a piece, then there would be little variation. You can see that in this simple but still striking little pendant by an undisclosed creative on VK.com. (If you know who made this, do let me know and I’ll update the post.) Here there is regular rhythm, an absolutely centered composition, and every shape is circular. The only variation is created by contrast in the value difference between the black and white and the textural difference between the smooth outer elements and the rough interior disc.
Now, looking at the two pendants, I’m sure you can see that there is a huge difference between the energy and feel of them, largely because of the level of variation.
It’s a Matter of Degrees
So, as you see, a piece can be interesting with little to no variation or contrast. These concepts add points and degrees of interest. It’s your intention that should determine what role they will play in your work.
Just think, if you want a piece to feel solemn and quiet, avoiding high contrast and keeping your variation quite subtle may be what you need. That calm could be very awe-inspiring in its subtlety. Alternately, you can have a piece with the points of contrast and variation ranging from subtle to obvious.
You see an example of moderation in contrast and variation in Amy Genser’s Eventide pictured here. Yes, the piece feels quite busy and has a lot of energy but the contrast and variation are not that dramatic. There’s a lot of texture but it’s all rough and predominantly created from the rolled-up paper elements. The rolled paper elements are all ovoid in shape but with variation in regard to the roundness and width. They also range in size and are very in color although, like the rest of the canvas, they are predominantly blue and cyan, keeping to the cool side of the color wheel. The canvas does open up into a brief mix of reds and yellows in the middle and the color values do range from a dark blue to white. But the variation is applied in a gradual and moderated way. Most of the energy comes from the texture, the repetition, and the sense of movement.
So, we see here that the degree of variation doesn’t have to be high to create energy or interest as other elements and principles can do that quite well. However, I do think in this case that the level of variation included boosts the energy of the texture and repetition. It’s a team effort.
So, unlike some other concepts, there is no way to really list the different types or degrees of contrast and variation and what they might mean for your particular piece. As you’ve seen, this is in large part due to how much these concepts depend on, and play off of, the other choices made in the design.
This is only a quick introduction to the subjects of contrast and variation but I’ll continue talking about them in many of my future posts. If you think about it, I’ve actually been talking about these ideas throughout the year as the differences in your choices for the various elements and principles is quite wrapped up in your decisions on how you’ll employ contrast and variation.
Some of your choices for contrast and variation will be made automatically if you make characteristic choices for your elements before specifically thinking about contrast or variation, like choosing just daisies for a flower necklace or choosing green and red as your color palette because it’s for Christmas. Repeated daisies will dictate rather low levels of variation because of the sameness of the primary motif so you’d have to work with contrast in things like value and size to take it up a notch. And Christmas colors are high contrast so it would be difficult to make the work also feel calm or serene starting from that color palette.
However, you might find it more advantageous to make choices about the degree of contrast and variation that would best suit the work and then make that happen through the characteristics you choose for your elements. In fact, knowing the degree of contrast and variation you want can help you make more confident and intentional choices for your elements, various principles, and composition. That’s how influential the concept of contrast and variation is in art.
Perhaps this talk of contrast and variety will get you jazzed to try out some variations on variety your own self. So, while the sun is shining and the muse is calling, do try to have a wonderful, safe, and creative week!
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Contrast – Vive la Difference
January 17, 2021
Uncategorized
So, I tried writing about contrast and variations for this week but it got REALLY long. So I’ve split them up. You will want to read this post first in order to get the most out of next week’s so don’t skip this one. It’s not too long.
So, how often do you think about contrast in your designs? Although all the principles of design appear, to some degree, in all work, contrast is, whether you realize it or not, integral in the choices you make for all design elements that you have more than one of—marks, lines, colors, shape, form, and texture. It also works between applications of design principles like rhythm, balance, proportion and movement.
How does that work? Well, since contrast is the difference between two or more features, every time you choose to use multiple lines, colors, textures, types of rhythm, etc., you are going to determine the degree to which each iteration will be different from the others or not. And that choice can say so much since contrast contributes to the visual interest, mood, and energy of a piece as well as being employed for emphasis and other compositional considerations.
Contrast and Compare
Contrast is really more about comparison among things we see as related. Those comparisons help define the elements themselves.
For instance, a nice cerulean blue looks rather light when in the company of a royal purple but next to a pale peach it doesn’t seem light at all and yet, in both cases, there is a contrast in hue and value. The commonality is that they are both color elements while their differences are the characteristics you choose.
See this in action in Anarina Anar’s earrings (above). She uses an orange that looks light paired with black but it appears as the darkest of the colors, aside from the spots of black, when paired with the light cyan and white.
This works with any element. With shape, for example, a particular circle may seem small when near another circle that is much bigger, creating a contrast in size. However, that one circle’s smallness disappears if the other circle is of a similar size. It also eliminates the contrast.
These relationships make contrast relative which means you, ideally, chose your contrasting elements based on how they appear in combination with other elements of the same type. In other words, you can have contrast between different types of line or different types of color but you don’t identify contrast between a line and a color. They are already different, right? The contrast needs to be something that can be adjusted to make the contrasting elements more alike or less alike.
Speaking with Contrast
Working with contrast means you compare specific elements and change them out or adjust their differences to create the degree of contrast that you want. In this way, contrast can help you define the purpose or meaning of the elements in your work by how they relate to each other.
Take a piece that is all circles and squares and black and white. You have high contrast in shapes and in value. Rather high energy, right? That seems to work with the graphic nature of the overall theme. How about a piece that is all earth tones and hand cut leaf shapes? There may not be a lot of contrast in color or shape but that can convey harmony which does seem to support the concept of nature that it is likely rooted in.
Let’s look at an example of Arden Bardol’s work. The brooch you see here is a study in all types of contrast. The most obvious is its three-way value contrast with all that black, gray, and white. However, there is even more contrast with the “marks” of sliced cane, dots, and white rectangles.
In the marks, there is a shape difference between the circles and rectangles, a size and proportion difference between the large circles and small dots, and a difference in rhythm between the random placement of the black bordered white marks, the alternating placement of the gold dots, and the orderliness of those running up and down the lines of the left side.
This works for the predominant theme in all Arden’s work—” that life is a series of events which are sometimes magical, sometimes challenging. These events affect who we are. When they are viewed together as a whole, they create a unique and wonderful ‘coat of many colors.’” She also describes her work as “rich in complexity and simple in form” which the use of contrast greatly supports.
Put Contrast to Work
Now, how have you been using contrast and how might you employ it to speak for you in the future?
When trying to determine how to use contrast in your work, consider how much energy, tension, and drama your intention needs and then look to your elements of design for options to increase or decrease contrast. Adjust the characteristic of your different marks, lines, shapes, forms, color, and texture to create that level of contrast.
Angela Gerhard went for high contrast in her sgraffito enamel pendant here. Light versus dark, messy versus orderly, the vertical columns of seed beads against all those horizontal elements, and, even, color versus no color with that one wide swath of orange-red in the midst of all that black and white. That’s a lot of potential energy.
Even so, there is a restraint, a stillness in the piece. How did that happen? Well, the horizontals are dominant and they typically convey calm due to the stillness they represent (a principle of movement; in this case, minimal movement) so all the contrast in the elements helps infuse the pendant with energy that would not otherwise be there. That in itself is a contrast. You have high energy in contrast against low energy in movement, the comparison being between the choices of energy levels rather than the principles used to create it. It’s very intriguing.
So, like everything else, contrast is part of a mix of decisions that all have to play well together. I do find contrast a great place to start though since it can help you make decisions in so many other areas. Once you work with contrast as a guiding decision for other choices, you will probably start seeing more ways that contrast speaks for you, whether through the implied energy, the way high contrast can bring emphasis to a particular section or set of elements, or even metaphorically.
Questioning your use of contrast is also a great way to examine work you aren’t pleased with. Maybe you’re not happy with the shapes because they are too much alike or things feel chaotic because there is just too much of a difference between the types of lines you are using. Try adjusting the contrast between those elements and see if that doesn’t bring the work to a much better place.
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A Call for Unity (in Design)
January 10, 2021
Uncategorized
Telling someone that a piece of artwork needs to look unified seems terribly obvious. However, a lack of unity is often the “I can’t quite put my finger on it” aspect of a piece that could use some improvement. But what exactly is unity when it comes to design?
Unity is the principle of attaining cohesion throughout the whole of a piece. Key to creating unity is establishing similarities which are really about finding points of commonality between the elements. In fact, as I discuss this, I’ll often use the term commonality instead of similarity because it’s that common connection that you’re really after.
(Above) Christine Dumont, creates commonality among her elements through an even, symmetrical design, restricted to only straight lines and right angles, and choosing equally bright colors on top and bottom.
Unity in Review
We actually talked about the core of these concepts back in September as we wrapped up the discussion of color. Do remember these analogies about how we want to find the similarity and connection between things?
Our minds are always analyzing our world, weighing and judging all kinds of things our senses take in, but the mind works particularly hard to find connections between things, trying to divine a relationship between objects or concepts we encounter. When we can’t find the relationship or common connection between things that seem to belong together, it feels uncomfortable. Like, if you see two people sitting on a park bench in close proximity to each other, you assume they know each other. But if one is dressed in a business suit and the other is all punked out in black clothes and sports a mohawk, you may find it weird. The close proximity makes you think there should be a connection between them but their appearance makes a connection difficult to ascertain.
That particular paragraph pointed out the fact that proximity is not enough to make things look like they belong together. So just because you have a number of elements within the same frame or on the same form does not mean they’re going to look like they belong together. They have to have something in common.
That something might be visual such as a color, shape, texture, or pattern but it also might be conceptual. For instance, they could all may be related to a particular style, place, well-known story, or other subject matter. That comes up in the next recollected paragraph referring back to the two men on the park bench:
Now, if those same two people both had French bulldogs sitting at their feet you might assume that they are part of a French bulldog lover’s club. Or, if they have similar documents in hand then you might think that they are a businessman and a client going over paperwork. Once you find a connection, then the relationship makes sense even if the contrast between the two is odd. That contrast simply makes for an interesting combination but it’s not a wholly comfortable one until the viewer is able to divine a possible reason for them to be sitting together. We simply want things to make sense.
So, unity and similarity work together to help the viewer make sense of what they see. The most direct and often easiest ways to create similarities is to choose visual elements or characteristics of visual elements that support your intention and are used throughout the piece. For instance, lines that are predominantly curved, even if curved in different ways, would create commonality between those lines. Or if most of the elements were blocky or thick there would be commonality between that characteristic of your element’s forms.
But here’s the catch. You want commonality but you don’t want everything to be the same.
Similar but Not Boring
The concepts of unity and similarity are often discussed in tandem with variety and contrast. You really need to have both similarity and contrast to create unity and variety, and you need unity and variety to create a piece that is both cohesive and interesting. If you don’t, the work is likely to seem uncomfortable or boring or both.
That’s all I’m going to say about contrast and variety until the next lesson. It’s kind of a big subject. But keep in mind, you really can’t have a unifying piece without some variety so the objective is not to make everything look alike but to ensure the viewer can make connections between everything they see.
Seen here on the right, Carol Blackburn’s Odd Couple vessels employ visual unity in strong geometric shapes, well-defined lines, and consistently saturated colors. For all those points of commonality, this is anything but boring due to the high contrast in color, direction of elements, and variety of pattern.
Using Concepts to Create Unity
Are you starting to get the idea that unity is a tad more complicated than it might at first sound like? This is why using style, story, or other particular subject matters as the guiding or underlying concept for a piece (as long as it is related to or is the subject of your intention) is often a better way to go. These sources for your intentional choices are going to be inherently more complex and will always include points of similarity and contrast simply because they are rooted in the broadness of our ideas or experiences.
Style concepts you can use to guide your choices could be anything from a historically recognized aesthetic period such as Art Deco or Colonial, a modern trend such as minimalism or BoHo, or a subculture like goth or steampunk. It could even be a style of your own that you have developed after unearthing your own well-developed artistic voice.
Beatriz Cominatto created pieces inspired by the native work of the Marajoara people who lived on Brazil’s Marajo Island. An avid researcher and history lover, Beatriz studied archaeological finds from the island extensively before starting the series. The story of these people and their aesthetic inform all her design choices here, resulting in cohesive and intriguing piece.
The bottom line is you want all your elements to be seen as connected. That will create the unity and therefore the cohesiveness that makes a work feel masterfully complete. Whether you connect that through visual elements or connect your choices to particular concepts or subject matters, the important thing is that your viewer can see or sense why all of your chosen elements belong together.
My New Year Begins
After a particularly distracting week (for all of us, I know!) I am finally digging into the preparations for the “year of me” that I am planning, creatively speaking. I’m clearing space in the garage for some messier work involving glass and stone but I’m not so good at just quickly making space. I figure if I am reorganizing, I’m going to do it right. So I think I will be lost in there for whatever time I can manage for while yet. We never had the opportunity to really organize the space after he moved in four years ago so I’m using it as both a bit of downtime (yes, I know, only I would consider cleaning out a garage as downtime) and a literal and symbolic way to start this new chapter of my life off right.
I’m not sure when I will have work to show since my projects are rather ambitious and will take some time, but my fiction writing has work has already begun. I still have more research for the book to do but unlike the artwork, I’m impatient to get to the writing so I’m allowing myself time to work on short stories related to the novel’s characters. I cannot tell you how incredible it is to be working on creative projects that are not related to anything I’m trying to sell. Sure, I’ll try to sell the book the future but, for now, I am so enjoying getting lost in the writing.
I’m also working on an author website and I updated my artist website enough to allow cross promotion between the two. Luckily, my web guy is completely free right now to work on those for me and I get to pay him in trade, writing content for his clients so everything is just falling into place.
When websites, new writing, or new art is ready for prime time, I’ll let you all know.
I hope the start of your year and whatever you have planned is getting happily launched. I know we’re not out of the woods yet with the struggles we have had since early last year but I think we are starting to dig ourselves out. As long as 2020 doesn’t drag its trials and tribulations into 2021 too far. Last week wasn’t a great start but sometimes you have to go down to go up. Just hoping we don’t sink down much farther!
Please everyone stay safe, warm, healthy, kind, and positive!
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Moving Art & My New Direction
January 3, 2021
Design lessons, Polymer community news
After all the talk of repetition and rhythm last week, it is only natural that we should discuss a concept I have casually brought up numerous times already—the concept of movement and its role in design.
Movement can be found in a single element or can refer to the whole of a composition. It can be implied, such as the sense of gravity pulling on objects set on diagonal lines or the flow of a wavy path of dots. It might be symbolically expressed as in arrows directing the eye or curled lines reminding us of wind. It can also be literal, kinetic movement as seen in the swing of a dangling earring or the moving limbs of a ball joint doll.
Although all those examples are recognized types of movement, you should keep in mind that, as a concept, movement is a range of possibilities. From absolute stillness to a maelstrom of energy, some level of movement is going to be present in your work whether you consciously consider it or not. However, its importance cannot be ignored. Movement does two particularly important things—it creates or restrains much of the sense of energy in the work and it is, usually, key to leading the viewer’s eye around the composition.
(Above) Using polymer marquetry J.M. Syron and Bonnie Bishoff create highly directional lines of branches, densely sweeping up towards the single bird flying through the open space of the sky beyond them.
Movement Through Elements
You can create movement with any element such as lines, marks, color, and texture in order to convey the degree of movement desired. Lines are the most obvious because they can be so insistently directional and our eyes follow them like paths. Marks can be arranged to create lines or can create a sense of movement by a progressive change in density, from sparse to crowded. Texture can be manipulated in the same progressive way.
Color can be a little trickier but can definitely still convey movement through the use of light versus dark values or saturated versus dull. Light and bright colors feel more dynamic and can accentuate a sense of movement while dull and dark colors tend to feel heavy and more inert.
In the brooch here by Sabine Spiesser, movement is created by line, form, and balance. The form in black is a blunted arrow heading left, the movement in that direction reinforced by the echo in the shape of the red line and the direction of the black lines connecting them. The textured form also creeps over the red line in that same direction. In addition, the balance favors a lean to the left with the heaviness of the black form but the broader gold and red side pulls it back, giving the impression that only the weight of the larger form is holding the black boomerang from taking off.
Movement Through Principles
As you may recall from previous lessons, movement is conveyed with these elements primarily through various concepts of design.
For instance, last week we saw how a sense of movement can be created by employing types of rhythm such as flowing (using wavy or curly lines) or progressive rhythm (such as colors going from bright to dull or marks going from sparse to dense).
Don’t forget that rhythm also creates tempo which is all about a sense of speed and the passing of time, and speed is about nothing if not about movement.
The concept of balance will also establish degrees of movement. A centered composition tends towards stillness while asymmetry can create a pull as our minds mentally try to move objects towards more grounded positions or a logical equilibrium.
Even the concept of proportion can affect the degree of active movement. Elements of equal proportion can convey inactivity while uneven proportions can be used to produce a sense of movement through space or larger objects bearing down on smaller ones.
Aleksandra Micic uses line to create a swirling movement, densely packed at the bottom of her pendant where the tempo seems fast compared to the area of open space above, but the dark, heavy colors weight that energy down in a way that quiets the movement. The light and brighter flowers would increase the energy but for their widely spaced placement which, again, slows the tempo down, giving the pendant a reserved energy that moves languorously underneath the delicate, twinkling appearance of the blossoms.
Movement and Intention
So, when designing your work, consider how much movement you would like to see. It should come up with the same question as to how much energy should the piece have to best convey your intention.
A piece reminiscent of a lazy day at the beach would probably have calm energy and therefore minimal movement. If trying to capture the bustle of the big city, you’d probably be going for high energy and a very active sense of movement.
No matter what degree of energy you want in a piece, the sense of movement it has is going to be a primary visual conductor of that energy. And since so many other elements and concepts feed the sense of movement, you may want to ask yourself while making your design decisions not just how your decisions will fulfill your intention but how they will create the degree of movement that your intention requires.
Geez, that sounds heavy. And, yes, movement is very important but is also extremely fun and fulfilling to create.
So, don’t be afraid to spend a little time planning or manipulating elements to increase or decrease, as needed, the sense of movement in your piece. Just an awareness of the movement in your work can reveal so many exciting opportunities for your design.
New Year, New Directions
Okay gang. Here we are, finally, out of 2020 and into a new year that I think we can be quite hopeful for. For many of us, this past year has been one of the hardest years in our lives. For me, and I expect a lot of you as well, 2020’s hardships got a lot of us doing some soul-searching as the trials and tragedies we watched or endured gave us a different perspective on our lives and on our world.
That got me looking back at the past two years of changes I’ve made to the business. Those changes were not only to relieve the physical toll it took on me but in hopes of giving myself more time for my own artwork and writing projects. That hasn’t worked out as I’d hoped, especially with all the wrenches thrown into things this past year. So, this year, I’ve decided, is going to be the year of prioritizing my own creative work.
Unfortunately, that means I need to reduce what I do under Tenth Muse Arts and to that end, I am making these changes:
- The next 4 Mini-Mags will be the last for the foreseeable future. These will wrap up the Principles of Design lessons, ending on January 20th. The Devotee Club will close after the last mini-mag.
- I will still blog, although just every other week starting this month. I will continue building on your design knowledge plus share what I am making and writing.
- There is a hold on art book production for at least for the first half of the year.
- The shop will stay open and I’ll put out a newsletter when there is news or I plan a sale.
- I’ll continue coaching and am looking into offering periodic group coaching and/or critiquing sessions once I have my own work going.
I’ll keep in touch on this blog and in newsletters so I’m not disappearing. Just resetting my priorities. I have some challenging mixed media art I want to try and I aim to finish a novel I have been working on for years. Well, I’m actually going to rewrite the whole thing so I have some serious work ahead!
I do feel this time with my own work will benefit you as well as myself since getting back to a more creative life will give more authenticity and depth to what I share with you. If I can renew the joy in my own work, I should be better able to help you find more joy in your own in all the things I share in the future.
So, let’s see what great things we can bring about in 2021!
–Sage
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So, here we are, finally, at the last lesson in the design series I started last February. Although it has taken a year to go through everything, I thought was important for polymer and mixed media creatives to know about design, it will still take some time to master this stuff. So, don’t worry if you feel like you haven’t been able to soak it all in. Just stick with me and, over the coming months, we’ll have a grand old time reviewing and renewing that information so that, by a nearly effortless process of knowledge osmosis, you will continue to learn until it becomes second nature.
Our last lesson is about a pair of concepts that, like the contrast and variety concepts we talked about the previous couple of weeks, you actually already know. Well, you certainly should find them familiar if you’ve been keeping up with the lessons this past year.
They are the principles of Emphasis and Hierarchy. Both lean heavily on the Elements of Design and the other Principles of Design in order to work and have actually been part of our conversation on and off this whole year. So, the goal this week is to just bring them into focus so you have a clear understanding of how they work and why you use them. But first, let’s see what you recall.
What would you say emphasis is about? Well, if you said it’s about the thing that stands out, that is noticed first, or that could be thought of as the focal point in a piece, then yeah, you got this!
What do you look at first in the Laurie Mika piece above? It’s probably the face although you may register the red heart first. We normally just can’t help but examine a face before all else but the bright red among the relative neutrality of the metallics really puts up a fight for center stage.
If I ask you about hierarchy, and you start thinking about kings and queens or the political order of government, well, those are different subjects but it’s the same basic concept whether we’re talking about art or aristocracies. So, you have some basic knowledge about the concept of hierarchy as well.
You see, you’ve come to this lesson quite well prepared!
Of Power and Priorities
The role of emphasis and hierarchy are quite different even though they work hand-in-hand. Understanding these differences will help you create useful and engaging hierarchies while helping you to position your emphasis accordingly.
Let’s talk about what emphasis is and isn’t first. Emphasis, in its most important artistic role, is about drawing the viewer to a primary subject or the primary section of your piece, often referred to as the focal point. The focal point is usually imbued with the core or starting point of the subject matter, is a key representative of the concepts being explored, or epitomizes your aesthetic in a concise or introductory fashion. Everything else in the design will commonly work in support of that important element or section or will build off of it. The focal point is also generally the top element in the hierarchy.
The primary emphasis does not need to be dramatic or obvious. Carol Beal’s painted polymer pendants don’t have a focal “point” but more of a focal area in each of these pendants. Those areas are the ones that have the highest energy. In both cases it is about a quarter to one-third of the way down where the gold flecks are collected because the gold contrasts with the other colors and the finish of the paint but also because they appear to be layered on top, bringing them visually forward.
But emphasis is about more than just the focal point. Otherwise, why wouldn’t we just call it the focal point? Emphasis is comparative and relative.
You’ll see that in a hierarchy among secondary focal points or other sections. We often decide to give these parts variety or contrast and, in the process, some parts in a piece will stand out more than others. Our interpretation that some parts are more important than others is a comparative process as we determine their importance in relation to each other. So, the use of the principles of variety and contrast can play double duty by emphasizing or deemphasizing parts, something that you have full control over and can adjust as needed.
And once you start making certain elements appear more emphasized than others, you have created a hierarchy.
So, obviously, hierarchy defines where all the elements in the design fall in its visual pecking order. Unlike aristocracies, however, elements won’t be plotting to kill each other off to become the focal point. (But, gosh, wouldn’t that be a funny show?) But why is developing a hierarchy important?
Well, if you recall from my posts on composition, and especially if you were part of one of the clubs and got my step-by-step method for creating a path for the eye of the viewer, you may recall the concept of “leading the eye”. Those lessons were really about hierarchy as developing different points of interest starting with the main focus and defining additional sections with less and less importance is the definition of hierarchy. It’s tied into the viewers visual path through the piece because the viewer’s gaze will generally move around the composition from what is most important to what is least important, barring any strong directional lines that lead the eye around instead.
Although leading the eye is one of the primary reasons for creating hierarchy, you can do a number of other things with it as well including telling a story, developing a message, or giving the viewer an experience through the exploration and discovery you lead them on.
What do you think Laurie Mika was doing in the opening piece? Our eye goes from heart and face down the skeleton to the words below then up the columns of flowers and back down again. Notice how the flowers are just shapes, de-emphasizing them so they don’t fight with the detailed center elements.
Putting It into Practice
So, if you understand how emphasis works then you can develop hierarchies and if you understand the purpose of hierarchies then you can make intentional decisions about your elements that support these hierarchies.
For instance, let’s say you’ve developed a focal point on a pendant and it’s a red circle sitting at the central position of the Golden ratio. That is an extremely strong color and position so it shouldn’t be hard to create less emphasized secondary parts. But you still have to make the decisions about what those additional parts are and which of those will see more important than the others.
So, let’s say you have three other elements or sections you want to include. What color do you make them? You probably want to avoid red so as not to draw attention away from your focal point. Look to your other principles such as contrast or the characteristics of color that would support your intention to choose the colors for these other sections.
Let’s say you make the other elements various versions of cyan to contrast with the red. Because color has such impact, you won’t be able to create relative emphasis and your hierarchy if you don’t differentiate them with texture, size, proportion, etc.
So maybe you make one of them quite large and triangular and another quite small and circular. Give the large triangle an interesting rough texture and make the small circle smooth. The rough texture will have more energy, not to mention that the triangle is bigger, and therefore it will be noticed sooner than the small circle giving it a higher position in this hierarchy. In fact, the small smooth circle will be noticed last if registered at all because it has so little energy.
But what about that third section or element? If you make it of a medium-size, triangular or square so it is angular (angularity has more energy and feels more forceful than circles), with little to no texture, it will have subdued energy compared to the large triangle but will have a lot more going on than the small smooth circle. That way it should be the third thing noticed in the design.
Now, arrange these items so the viewers eye travels around the canvas in a manner that fulfills your intention. You’ll may to harken back to the lesson on line to really drive home how the arrangement can affect the feeling the viewer has about your work.
If you arrange this hierarchy in a straight line, from focal point to least emphasized element, it is going to feel very strong and fast. If it flows in a circle around the composition that will give it a much slower pace and one that is comfortable and inviting, as curvilinear lines generally are. If you arrange them so the viewer has to bounce back and forth across the canvas of the composition to look at the elements in their hierarchical order, it’s going to feel like a zigzag with more frenetic energy than the other options I just mentioned.
Are you starting to see how all this stuff works together?
Looking for Emphasis
I want to leave you with those ideas for now but I challenge you to start looking at the artwork of others and asking yourself where the emphasis is and what hierarchy has been established. See if you can recognize how it affects the way you view the piece and what you get out of it. Then, start doing looking at your own work the same way.
We will be looking more at hierarchy and emphasis in the coming weeks and then I will start circling back around to review the design lessons of the past year. In fact, although I did say I was probably going to do the blog every other week, I miss you all too much already and I’ve decided that I’m going to continue to write something for you weekly so we can continue to spend a little bit of our Sundays together. Some of the posts might be short but I should be able to get something out every week without it interfering with my personal projects. Sound good?
So, until next week, have a wonderful creative start to your February.
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Last weekend I talked about contrast, a concept closely related to variety, which is the subject for this week. Understanding the difference between the two can avoid a lot of confusion so I’ll be referring to contrast a bit today as well. If you didn’t see the last post, give it a quick read here.
Now, what is variation?
Variation is the range or assortment of differences throughout a design. Now, didn’t contrast also speak to differences? Yes, but those differences were between similar types of elements while variation is the degree of difference between all of the elements, principles, and placement choices in your work. It is like contrast in that variation is also used to create interest or energy or to otherwise support your intention, however, while contrast is often the key to adjusting the level of variation, you can have a fair bit of variation with little or no contrast.
To put it succinctly, contrast is the difference between two or more related elements while variety is about the relationship between all the elements in a piece. So, let’s talk about those relationships and how they are used in design.
Picturing Variation
First of all, keep in mind that you can create variation with elements or principles or pretty much any visual or conceptual part of your work.
Take the gorgeous pendant that opened this post. Liz Sabol has variation in color, line, balance, repetition, rhythm and even types of composition. In fact, even though we can identify a use of the Rule of Thirds, a Golden Spiral, and use of the Focus to the Right principle, it’s the barely-there nod to centered composition, created by an implied line from the midpoint focused, and yet asymmetrical, balance of the bail to the centered tip at the bottom of the pendant, that is holding all the chaos at bay. This piece is an absolute celebration of variation.
Alternately, if you use a lot of the same elements or employ principles in the same way throughout a piece, then there would be little variation. You can see that in this simple but still striking little pendant by an undisclosed creative on VK.com. (If you know who made this, do let me know and I’ll update the post.) Here there is regular rhythm, an absolutely centered composition, and every shape is circular. The only variation is created by contrast in the value difference between the black and white and the textural difference between the smooth outer elements and the rough interior disc.
Now, looking at the two pendants, I’m sure you can see that there is a huge difference between the energy and feel of them, largely because of the level of variation.
It’s a Matter of Degrees
So, as you see, a piece can be interesting with little to no variation or contrast. These concepts add points and degrees of interest. It’s your intention that should determine what role they will play in your work.
Just think, if you want a piece to feel solemn and quiet, avoiding high contrast and keeping your variation quite subtle may be what you need. That calm could be very awe-inspiring in its subtlety. Alternately, you can have a piece with the points of contrast and variation ranging from subtle to obvious.
You see an example of moderation in contrast and variation in Amy Genser’s Eventide pictured here. Yes, the piece feels quite busy and has a lot of energy but the contrast and variation are not that dramatic. There’s a lot of texture but it’s all rough and predominantly created from the rolled-up paper elements. The rolled paper elements are all ovoid in shape but with variation in regard to the roundness and width. They also range in size and are very in color although, like the rest of the canvas, they are predominantly blue and cyan, keeping to the cool side of the color wheel. The canvas does open up into a brief mix of reds and yellows in the middle and the color values do range from a dark blue to white. But the variation is applied in a gradual and moderated way. Most of the energy comes from the texture, the repetition, and the sense of movement.
So, we see here that the degree of variation doesn’t have to be high to create energy or interest as other elements and principles can do that quite well. However, I do think in this case that the level of variation included boosts the energy of the texture and repetition. It’s a team effort.
So, unlike some other concepts, there is no way to really list the different types or degrees of contrast and variation and what they might mean for your particular piece. As you’ve seen, this is in large part due to how much these concepts depend on, and play off of, the other choices made in the design.
This is only a quick introduction to the subjects of contrast and variation but I’ll continue talking about them in many of my future posts. If you think about it, I’ve actually been talking about these ideas throughout the year as the differences in your choices for the various elements and principles is quite wrapped up in your decisions on how you’ll employ contrast and variation.
Some of your choices for contrast and variation will be made automatically if you make characteristic choices for your elements before specifically thinking about contrast or variation, like choosing just daisies for a flower necklace or choosing green and red as your color palette because it’s for Christmas. Repeated daisies will dictate rather low levels of variation because of the sameness of the primary motif so you’d have to work with contrast in things like value and size to take it up a notch. And Christmas colors are high contrast so it would be difficult to make the work also feel calm or serene starting from that color palette.
However, you might find it more advantageous to make choices about the degree of contrast and variation that would best suit the work and then make that happen through the characteristics you choose for your elements. In fact, knowing the degree of contrast and variation you want can help you make more confident and intentional choices for your elements, various principles, and composition. That’s how influential the concept of contrast and variation is in art.
Perhaps this talk of contrast and variety will get you jazzed to try out some variations on variety your own self. So, while the sun is shining and the muse is calling, do try to have a wonderful, safe, and creative week!
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Read More
So, I tried writing about contrast and variations for this week but it got REALLY long. So I’ve split them up. You will want to read this post first in order to get the most out of next week’s so don’t skip this one. It’s not too long.
So, how often do you think about contrast in your designs? Although all the principles of design appear, to some degree, in all work, contrast is, whether you realize it or not, integral in the choices you make for all design elements that you have more than one of—marks, lines, colors, shape, form, and texture. It also works between applications of design principles like rhythm, balance, proportion and movement.
How does that work? Well, since contrast is the difference between two or more features, every time you choose to use multiple lines, colors, textures, types of rhythm, etc., you are going to determine the degree to which each iteration will be different from the others or not. And that choice can say so much since contrast contributes to the visual interest, mood, and energy of a piece as well as being employed for emphasis and other compositional considerations.
Contrast and Compare
Contrast is really more about comparison among things we see as related. Those comparisons help define the elements themselves.
For instance, a nice cerulean blue looks rather light when in the company of a royal purple but next to a pale peach it doesn’t seem light at all and yet, in both cases, there is a contrast in hue and value. The commonality is that they are both color elements while their differences are the characteristics you choose.
See this in action in Anarina Anar’s earrings (above). She uses an orange that looks light paired with black but it appears as the darkest of the colors, aside from the spots of black, when paired with the light cyan and white.
This works with any element. With shape, for example, a particular circle may seem small when near another circle that is much bigger, creating a contrast in size. However, that one circle’s smallness disappears if the other circle is of a similar size. It also eliminates the contrast.
These relationships make contrast relative which means you, ideally, chose your contrasting elements based on how they appear in combination with other elements of the same type. In other words, you can have contrast between different types of line or different types of color but you don’t identify contrast between a line and a color. They are already different, right? The contrast needs to be something that can be adjusted to make the contrasting elements more alike or less alike.
Speaking with Contrast
Working with contrast means you compare specific elements and change them out or adjust their differences to create the degree of contrast that you want. In this way, contrast can help you define the purpose or meaning of the elements in your work by how they relate to each other.
Take a piece that is all circles and squares and black and white. You have high contrast in shapes and in value. Rather high energy, right? That seems to work with the graphic nature of the overall theme. How about a piece that is all earth tones and hand cut leaf shapes? There may not be a lot of contrast in color or shape but that can convey harmony which does seem to support the concept of nature that it is likely rooted in.
Let’s look at an example of Arden Bardol’s work. The brooch you see here is a study in all types of contrast. The most obvious is its three-way value contrast with all that black, gray, and white. However, there is even more contrast with the “marks” of sliced cane, dots, and white rectangles.
In the marks, there is a shape difference between the circles and rectangles, a size and proportion difference between the large circles and small dots, and a difference in rhythm between the random placement of the black bordered white marks, the alternating placement of the gold dots, and the orderliness of those running up and down the lines of the left side.
This works for the predominant theme in all Arden’s work—” that life is a series of events which are sometimes magical, sometimes challenging. These events affect who we are. When they are viewed together as a whole, they create a unique and wonderful ‘coat of many colors.’” She also describes her work as “rich in complexity and simple in form” which the use of contrast greatly supports.
Put Contrast to Work
Now, how have you been using contrast and how might you employ it to speak for you in the future?
When trying to determine how to use contrast in your work, consider how much energy, tension, and drama your intention needs and then look to your elements of design for options to increase or decrease contrast. Adjust the characteristic of your different marks, lines, shapes, forms, color, and texture to create that level of contrast.
Angela Gerhard went for high contrast in her sgraffito enamel pendant here. Light versus dark, messy versus orderly, the vertical columns of seed beads against all those horizontal elements, and, even, color versus no color with that one wide swath of orange-red in the midst of all that black and white. That’s a lot of potential energy.
Even so, there is a restraint, a stillness in the piece. How did that happen? Well, the horizontals are dominant and they typically convey calm due to the stillness they represent (a principle of movement; in this case, minimal movement) so all the contrast in the elements helps infuse the pendant with energy that would not otherwise be there. That in itself is a contrast. You have high energy in contrast against low energy in movement, the comparison being between the choices of energy levels rather than the principles used to create it. It’s very intriguing.
So, like everything else, contrast is part of a mix of decisions that all have to play well together. I do find contrast a great place to start though since it can help you make decisions in so many other areas. Once you work with contrast as a guiding decision for other choices, you will probably start seeing more ways that contrast speaks for you, whether through the implied energy, the way high contrast can bring emphasis to a particular section or set of elements, or even metaphorically.
Questioning your use of contrast is also a great way to examine work you aren’t pleased with. Maybe you’re not happy with the shapes because they are too much alike or things feel chaotic because there is just too much of a difference between the types of lines you are using. Try adjusting the contrast between those elements and see if that doesn’t bring the work to a much better place.
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Telling someone that a piece of artwork needs to look unified seems terribly obvious. However, a lack of unity is often the “I can’t quite put my finger on it” aspect of a piece that could use some improvement. But what exactly is unity when it comes to design?
Unity is the principle of attaining cohesion throughout the whole of a piece. Key to creating unity is establishing similarities which are really about finding points of commonality between the elements. In fact, as I discuss this, I’ll often use the term commonality instead of similarity because it’s that common connection that you’re really after.
(Above) Christine Dumont, creates commonality among her elements through an even, symmetrical design, restricted to only straight lines and right angles, and choosing equally bright colors on top and bottom.
Unity in Review
We actually talked about the core of these concepts back in September as we wrapped up the discussion of color. Do remember these analogies about how we want to find the similarity and connection between things?
Our minds are always analyzing our world, weighing and judging all kinds of things our senses take in, but the mind works particularly hard to find connections between things, trying to divine a relationship between objects or concepts we encounter. When we can’t find the relationship or common connection between things that seem to belong together, it feels uncomfortable. Like, if you see two people sitting on a park bench in close proximity to each other, you assume they know each other. But if one is dressed in a business suit and the other is all punked out in black clothes and sports a mohawk, you may find it weird. The close proximity makes you think there should be a connection between them but their appearance makes a connection difficult to ascertain.
That particular paragraph pointed out the fact that proximity is not enough to make things look like they belong together. So just because you have a number of elements within the same frame or on the same form does not mean they’re going to look like they belong together. They have to have something in common.
That something might be visual such as a color, shape, texture, or pattern but it also might be conceptual. For instance, they could all may be related to a particular style, place, well-known story, or other subject matter. That comes up in the next recollected paragraph referring back to the two men on the park bench:
Now, if those same two people both had French bulldogs sitting at their feet you might assume that they are part of a French bulldog lover’s club. Or, if they have similar documents in hand then you might think that they are a businessman and a client going over paperwork. Once you find a connection, then the relationship makes sense even if the contrast between the two is odd. That contrast simply makes for an interesting combination but it’s not a wholly comfortable one until the viewer is able to divine a possible reason for them to be sitting together. We simply want things to make sense.
So, unity and similarity work together to help the viewer make sense of what they see. The most direct and often easiest ways to create similarities is to choose visual elements or characteristics of visual elements that support your intention and are used throughout the piece. For instance, lines that are predominantly curved, even if curved in different ways, would create commonality between those lines. Or if most of the elements were blocky or thick there would be commonality between that characteristic of your element’s forms.
But here’s the catch. You want commonality but you don’t want everything to be the same.
Similar but Not Boring
The concepts of unity and similarity are often discussed in tandem with variety and contrast. You really need to have both similarity and contrast to create unity and variety, and you need unity and variety to create a piece that is both cohesive and interesting. If you don’t, the work is likely to seem uncomfortable or boring or both.
That’s all I’m going to say about contrast and variety until the next lesson. It’s kind of a big subject. But keep in mind, you really can’t have a unifying piece without some variety so the objective is not to make everything look alike but to ensure the viewer can make connections between everything they see.
Seen here on the right, Carol Blackburn’s Odd Couple vessels employ visual unity in strong geometric shapes, well-defined lines, and consistently saturated colors. For all those points of commonality, this is anything but boring due to the high contrast in color, direction of elements, and variety of pattern.
Using Concepts to Create Unity
Are you starting to get the idea that unity is a tad more complicated than it might at first sound like? This is why using style, story, or other particular subject matters as the guiding or underlying concept for a piece (as long as it is related to or is the subject of your intention) is often a better way to go. These sources for your intentional choices are going to be inherently more complex and will always include points of similarity and contrast simply because they are rooted in the broadness of our ideas or experiences.
Style concepts you can use to guide your choices could be anything from a historically recognized aesthetic period such as Art Deco or Colonial, a modern trend such as minimalism or BoHo, or a subculture like goth or steampunk. It could even be a style of your own that you have developed after unearthing your own well-developed artistic voice.
Beatriz Cominatto created pieces inspired by the native work of the Marajoara people who lived on Brazil’s Marajo Island. An avid researcher and history lover, Beatriz studied archaeological finds from the island extensively before starting the series. The story of these people and their aesthetic inform all her design choices here, resulting in cohesive and intriguing piece.
The bottom line is you want all your elements to be seen as connected. That will create the unity and therefore the cohesiveness that makes a work feel masterfully complete. Whether you connect that through visual elements or connect your choices to particular concepts or subject matters, the important thing is that your viewer can see or sense why all of your chosen elements belong together.
My New Year Begins
After a particularly distracting week (for all of us, I know!) I am finally digging into the preparations for the “year of me” that I am planning, creatively speaking. I’m clearing space in the garage for some messier work involving glass and stone but I’m not so good at just quickly making space. I figure if I am reorganizing, I’m going to do it right. So I think I will be lost in there for whatever time I can manage for while yet. We never had the opportunity to really organize the space after he moved in four years ago so I’m using it as both a bit of downtime (yes, I know, only I would consider cleaning out a garage as downtime) and a literal and symbolic way to start this new chapter of my life off right.
I’m not sure when I will have work to show since my projects are rather ambitious and will take some time, but my fiction writing has work has already begun. I still have more research for the book to do but unlike the artwork, I’m impatient to get to the writing so I’m allowing myself time to work on short stories related to the novel’s characters. I cannot tell you how incredible it is to be working on creative projects that are not related to anything I’m trying to sell. Sure, I’ll try to sell the book the future but, for now, I am so enjoying getting lost in the writing.
I’m also working on an author website and I updated my artist website enough to allow cross promotion between the two. Luckily, my web guy is completely free right now to work on those for me and I get to pay him in trade, writing content for his clients so everything is just falling into place.
When websites, new writing, or new art is ready for prime time, I’ll let you all know.
I hope the start of your year and whatever you have planned is getting happily launched. I know we’re not out of the woods yet with the struggles we have had since early last year but I think we are starting to dig ourselves out. As long as 2020 doesn’t drag its trials and tribulations into 2021 too far. Last week wasn’t a great start but sometimes you have to go down to go up. Just hoping we don’t sink down much farther!
Please everyone stay safe, warm, healthy, kind, and positive!
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After all the talk of repetition and rhythm last week, it is only natural that we should discuss a concept I have casually brought up numerous times already—the concept of movement and its role in design.
Movement can be found in a single element or can refer to the whole of a composition. It can be implied, such as the sense of gravity pulling on objects set on diagonal lines or the flow of a wavy path of dots. It might be symbolically expressed as in arrows directing the eye or curled lines reminding us of wind. It can also be literal, kinetic movement as seen in the swing of a dangling earring or the moving limbs of a ball joint doll.
Although all those examples are recognized types of movement, you should keep in mind that, as a concept, movement is a range of possibilities. From absolute stillness to a maelstrom of energy, some level of movement is going to be present in your work whether you consciously consider it or not. However, its importance cannot be ignored. Movement does two particularly important things—it creates or restrains much of the sense of energy in the work and it is, usually, key to leading the viewer’s eye around the composition.
(Above) Using polymer marquetry J.M. Syron and Bonnie Bishoff create highly directional lines of branches, densely sweeping up towards the single bird flying through the open space of the sky beyond them.
Movement Through Elements
You can create movement with any element such as lines, marks, color, and texture in order to convey the degree of movement desired. Lines are the most obvious because they can be so insistently directional and our eyes follow them like paths. Marks can be arranged to create lines or can create a sense of movement by a progressive change in density, from sparse to crowded. Texture can be manipulated in the same progressive way.
Color can be a little trickier but can definitely still convey movement through the use of light versus dark values or saturated versus dull. Light and bright colors feel more dynamic and can accentuate a sense of movement while dull and dark colors tend to feel heavy and more inert.
In the brooch here by Sabine Spiesser, movement is created by line, form, and balance. The form in black is a blunted arrow heading left, the movement in that direction reinforced by the echo in the shape of the red line and the direction of the black lines connecting them. The textured form also creeps over the red line in that same direction. In addition, the balance favors a lean to the left with the heaviness of the black form but the broader gold and red side pulls it back, giving the impression that only the weight of the larger form is holding the black boomerang from taking off.
Movement Through Principles
As you may recall from previous lessons, movement is conveyed with these elements primarily through various concepts of design.
For instance, last week we saw how a sense of movement can be created by employing types of rhythm such as flowing (using wavy or curly lines) or progressive rhythm (such as colors going from bright to dull or marks going from sparse to dense).
Don’t forget that rhythm also creates tempo which is all about a sense of speed and the passing of time, and speed is about nothing if not about movement.
The concept of balance will also establish degrees of movement. A centered composition tends towards stillness while asymmetry can create a pull as our minds mentally try to move objects towards more grounded positions or a logical equilibrium.
Even the concept of proportion can affect the degree of active movement. Elements of equal proportion can convey inactivity while uneven proportions can be used to produce a sense of movement through space or larger objects bearing down on smaller ones.
Aleksandra Micic uses line to create a swirling movement, densely packed at the bottom of her pendant where the tempo seems fast compared to the area of open space above, but the dark, heavy colors weight that energy down in a way that quiets the movement. The light and brighter flowers would increase the energy but for their widely spaced placement which, again, slows the tempo down, giving the pendant a reserved energy that moves languorously underneath the delicate, twinkling appearance of the blossoms.
Movement and Intention
So, when designing your work, consider how much movement you would like to see. It should come up with the same question as to how much energy should the piece have to best convey your intention.
A piece reminiscent of a lazy day at the beach would probably have calm energy and therefore minimal movement. If trying to capture the bustle of the big city, you’d probably be going for high energy and a very active sense of movement.
No matter what degree of energy you want in a piece, the sense of movement it has is going to be a primary visual conductor of that energy. And since so many other elements and concepts feed the sense of movement, you may want to ask yourself while making your design decisions not just how your decisions will fulfill your intention but how they will create the degree of movement that your intention requires.
Geez, that sounds heavy. And, yes, movement is very important but is also extremely fun and fulfilling to create.
So, don’t be afraid to spend a little time planning or manipulating elements to increase or decrease, as needed, the sense of movement in your piece. Just an awareness of the movement in your work can reveal so many exciting opportunities for your design.
New Year, New Directions
Okay gang. Here we are, finally, out of 2020 and into a new year that I think we can be quite hopeful for. For many of us, this past year has been one of the hardest years in our lives. For me, and I expect a lot of you as well, 2020’s hardships got a lot of us doing some soul-searching as the trials and tragedies we watched or endured gave us a different perspective on our lives and on our world.
That got me looking back at the past two years of changes I’ve made to the business. Those changes were not only to relieve the physical toll it took on me but in hopes of giving myself more time for my own artwork and writing projects. That hasn’t worked out as I’d hoped, especially with all the wrenches thrown into things this past year. So, this year, I’ve decided, is going to be the year of prioritizing my own creative work.
Unfortunately, that means I need to reduce what I do under Tenth Muse Arts and to that end, I am making these changes:
- The next 4 Mini-Mags will be the last for the foreseeable future. These will wrap up the Principles of Design lessons, ending on January 20th. The Devotee Club will close after the last mini-mag.
- I will still blog, although just every other week starting this month. I will continue building on your design knowledge plus share what I am making and writing.
- There is a hold on art book production for at least for the first half of the year.
- The shop will stay open and I’ll put out a newsletter when there is news or I plan a sale.
- I’ll continue coaching and am looking into offering periodic group coaching and/or critiquing sessions once I have my own work going.
I’ll keep in touch on this blog and in newsletters so I’m not disappearing. Just resetting my priorities. I have some challenging mixed media art I want to try and I aim to finish a novel I have been working on for years. Well, I’m actually going to rewrite the whole thing so I have some serious work ahead!
I do feel this time with my own work will benefit you as well as myself since getting back to a more creative life will give more authenticity and depth to what I share with you. If I can renew the joy in my own work, I should be better able to help you find more joy in your own in all the things I share in the future.
So, let’s see what great things we can bring about in 2021!
–Sage
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