• Special message: Put Sunday, September 17, 2 PM Eastern on your calendar for your September Live Chat on YouTube! Topic: What's Warm? What's Cool? The most misunderstood composing tool is contrast. For one thing, too often the word itself is used to mean extreme difference, but in painting, any amount of difference is a contrast. It's like hammering in a two-inch nail or driving in a small tack. You are using the same tool, but the degree of force varies according to
its purpose. Another way contrasting is misunderstood is that too often it is used only to refer to value, but that's a mistake. ALL the elements can be contrasted. Think of strong contrasts as a way to create emphasis. Think of lesser degrees of contrast as a way of making things belong or keeping the balance within your painting. (More on that in weeks to come.) In the example below, can you feel the difference in the values between the top and bottom pairs of shapes? Those shapes on the left are the same value, but those on the right are of a different value. Being closer in value to each other, the top pair, having more in common
with each other, cause a feeling of less emphasis than the bottom ones whose values have less in common. Thus, they emphasize each other more. We contrasted the bottom set by using a greater degree of difference in value. WHAT ABOUT THE OTHER SIX VISUAL ELEMENTS? For the other six visual elements, here is one example for each out of dozens of ways we can contrast them. CONTRAST IS NOT A RULE, BUT A TOOL! For using the tool of contrast, we keep in mind two things when planning and creating our paintings: - We use the tool of contrast to create whatever differences we need. For strong emphasis, we can use strong contrast.
For more subtle differences, we can use weaker contrasts.
- We use the tool of contrast with ALL the visual elements, not just value.
Enjoy a delightful 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
You can access the archive of all my newsletters (as well as the Quick Tips and other stuff) at any time by going HERE.
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