By popular request, this post is a somewhat edited and spruced up
encore from February 19, 2018. I hope you enjoy it.
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 of ourselves signals that enable an experience. Our tongue's ability to taste, our nose's facility to smell, our skin's touch, our ears' hearing and our eyes' seeing.
Sensory entrance will trigger our memories, our emotions, our associations, our empathy and more. Our art work will awaken these within our viewers, but
we visual artists cannot always determine viewers' responses. But we need not be at all concerned about that, however, 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 eyes entered. Ask yourself what your eyes did after they entered. What caused your
eyes to enter where they did?
Now, close your eyes again, then open them and look at the next image with the same questions. Where do your eyes
enter and what do they do after they've entered?
Do you notice that your eyes move more actively in the second image as compared to the first? Do you notice that it's repetition of shape
that causes that?
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 last 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?
All four images gave you a sensory entrance. Each gave you an experience. In the first two, you had contrasting shapes in contrasting
values. In the third image you had contrasting color within a similar shapes. In the fourth you had the same contrasting color repeated within similar shape
Thinking about your own visual creations, what does this exercise tell you?
HAVE YOURSELVES A DELIGHTFUL WEEKEND OF DISCOVERY!
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