• Special message: Put July 16, 2 pm Eastern on your calendar for our next Live Chat from our YouTube channel. The topic will cover all the questions concerning Copying. If you have a specific question you'd like
me to address, include it in a reply to this email. Last week, we looked at color's role as not just a describer, but also as a harmonizer. There's another major role color plays in our painting. It can guide our eyes. That makes it a key player in creating visual paths. When a color's hue is different from other hues appearing in any location of a painting, the eyes tend to go to it first. Look at this design and notice where your eyes go first. Notice how your eyes can't help but go to the yellow green disc. Try to focus on the grey negative area and watch how your eyes behave. They want to go back to the disc. Now watch what your eyes do when we add a disc identical in color to this
one. Do you notice how your eyes move back and forth between the two? That movement is a diagonal visual path. And when we add a third one, your eyes move among the three in a triangular visual path. It's even more difficult to make your eyes
focus on the gray negative space. They want to follow the path instead. HARMONIZING THE NEGATIVE SPACE COLOR Even when we harmonize the negative space by making it a desaturated yellow green--using the same hue as the discs, but changing the saturation and the value-- the discs still guide the eye movement in that triangular path. That is another miracle of color that makes it far more functional than just describing images. Enjoy a colorful weekend! 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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