More Insight into our Visual Language
Did you know that the principles of composition originated in nature? When we are working with visual paths, we are doing so with those principles, whether or not we
can quote the principle itself. Visual paths are the artist's tool for keeping the eye flowing throughout the painting, yes, but often those clues will come from your observation of nature, or even from your own surroundings.
Allow your eye to enter the photo below. Notice where your eye goes first.
Now look at this one and watch where your eye goes to first.
My bet is that in the top photo, your eye went right to the road, and that in the bottom one, your eye went first to the yellow orange tree left of the middle section. In the second version of the photo, that little tree holds
the strongest emphasis, but there's a different kind of visual path created with those repeated yellow-orange hues. In the top one, the converging lines of the road brings us in and takes us to where it ends in the photo.
To converge means to come together from different directions and meet at a single point. It's a unifying concept, not unlike all the
principles that make paintings work. Oddly, all of them are as true to living as they are to successful painting. But I deviate.
To keep us oriented in space, the way our eyes work is that they perceive parallel edges converging rather than side by side (if our eyes are not parallel
to the lines). This is obvious when looking at roads, railway tracks, and paths. The same is true for other images around us such as furniture, cabinets, and even the human face. But the lines don't have to be parallel to point us towards a converging point. They can be diagonal alignments found almost anywhere. Counter diagonals pull our eyes towards the point where they visually converge.
Look how the 18th century French painter, Jacques-Louis David, used diagonal convergence to help pull our attention to the area where he wanted the greatest emphasis (the focal point) where the
oath is being sworn.
The use of convergence is David's visual path strategy in this painting. It is one method master artists often use to keep the viewer's attention within the painting as well as call attention
to the focal point.
Take a trip over to the website of contemporary painter, Quang Ho HERE. Browse through his work and locate
paintings where he has used some sort of diagonal converging path. To find the path, just pay attention to how your eyes move along a diagonal alignment towards images in the painting, and which behavior of the elements cause that.
To go in-depth into the power of the converging lines visual path, there is a thorough article about visual paths on Pentax Forums . Fascinating stuff!
During my Language of Painting series, I explained the role of our visual elements. If you'd like to review those roles to better understand the behavior of elements, here are the links to each of those
discussions: Color --Value -- Shape -- Texture -- Size -- Line and Direction
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