Do you want to get your viewers' attention? I mean really get their attention? Make them look where you want them to look? Try using a strategy of directional
movement.
Directional movement is any visual tool that directs the viewer's attention either by how images are placed and/or
emphasized. It could be visual lines that converge, it could be the placement of images, it could be the direction in which images are turned or leaning, it could be value contrasts or simultaneous contrast. Whatever strategy points the viewer to a landing place in a painting is directional movement.
Andrew Wyeth uses placement in "Christina's World". He grabs you with the way he's placed Christina and makes you look at her house by the way she looks towards it. He has all
three images emphasized with the tools of isolating and strong value contrast.
Richard Schmid does it with one-point perspective, a strategy that works every time to command the viewer's attention. It's the
converging lines that create the direction.
In A Hopeless Dawn, 19th century British painter Frank Bramley uses the direction in which images are turned to pull us towards
the table, then out the window.
Choose a scene, then rather than copy it as you see it, work out some rough sketches where you consciously edit
placement or angles or even contrasts of the images to land the viewers exactly where you want to go when they first look at your work. Once you realize you have that freedom, never again will you want to settle for just what nature gives you.
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