A musician's sensory entrance is the ear, a visual artist's sensory entrance is the eye. A sensory entrance is that part of our physical being through which we pick up from outside ourselves signals that enable an experience. Our tongue's ability to taste, our nose's facility to smell, our skin's sensitivity to touch, our ears' hearing and our
eyes' seeing.
Along with the sensory entrance, other things get triggered - our memories, our emotions, our associations, our empathy and more. We visual artists cannot always determine our viewer's response, but we can guide their sensory entrance.
Close your eyes for a moment, then without thought look at the image below.
Describe to yourself where your eye entered. Ask yourself what your eyes did after they entered. What caused your eye to enter where it did?
Now, close your eyes again, then open them and look at the next image with the same questions. Where did your eyes enter and what did they do after they
entered?
Do you notice that your eye moves more actively in the second image as compared to the first?
Let's do this experiment again with a different image. Close your eyes, then without thought, look at the image, paying attention to where your eyes enter first.
What caused your eyes to land there? What did your eyes do after they landed?
Once again, close your eyes, then without thought, look at the image, paying attention to where your eyes enter first then where they go
next.
Where did your eyes enter and what caused them to enter there? Did they move faster than in the previous image?
Both sets of images gave you a sensory entrance. Both gave you an experience. In the first set, you had a contrasting shape in a contrasting value. In the
second set you had contrasting color within a similar shape.
Thinking about your own visual creations, what does this exercise tell you?
You can access the archive of all my newsletters at anytime by going HERE. |
|
|
|
