Have you ever thought about how life would be boring without continuums? A continuum is a potential sequence of changes that connect two things that are different, like blue moving through violet to connect to red. There's blue, the
degrees of blue that become violet, then degrees of violet that become red. All composing tools work on a continuum. The tool of emphasis is one which allows us to control where we want the attention to be in a painting and how much attention we want that area to get. In On the Fence by Winslow Homer (below), notice how the foliage on the trees in the frontal plane are more emphasized than the mountains in the distance. That emphasis is created by
strong value contrast of the leaves as well as their isolated shapes. Homer is
emphasizing the foreground activity by de-emphasizing the distant shapes quite a bit. More contrast and details in those distance shapes would give them more attention and by doing so, decrease the attention of the foreground images. That is a continuum of emphasis. In Village Landscape (below) by Jules Dupree, the emphasis tool is used in reverse. Depree is calling our attention to the distance--the sky and the buildings, as well as the man driving the cart. The
strongest value contrasts are greater in those areas, getting more emphasis. That moderate degree of value contrast in the trees on either side and the frontal area of the painting get less emphasis. The blue portions of the sky are contrasted in hue with all the warm colors in the landscape, producing a relatively strong emphasis there, too.
If all that were getting equal emphasis, the painting would lose its effectiveness. This is a clear example of using emphasis in continuum--strong, moderate and weaker--for a more intriguing painting. Having equal emphasis everywhere actually makes the work weaker. Some would call that
overstating. Almost 200 years later, contemporary artist Roger Bansemer uses the same emphasis tool with the same kind of continuum in his English Landscape-A New Start. It is the distance that is
emphasized but notice how he has done that--the warm colors are gradating gradually into the cools, in all directions--an uninterruted continuum in color. Roger has also used a continuum of value contrast to emphasize--more value contrast around the bright, warm area, and less value contrast toward the edges on both sides and in the frontal area. By the way, you can see more of Roger's paintings at www.rogerbansemer.com . He is especially adroit at controlling degrees of emphasis in all his work. All our visual elements contain potential for creating emphasis by the degrees to which each can be contrasted. (Review The Tool of Contrast HERE). Remember, the use of the continuum, though, is really what makes emphasizing do its work. Enjoy a resourceful weekend!
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Happy Painting,
Dianne
dianne@diannemize.com
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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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