Today I was working on emphasis through isolation and placement for Creative Composition. I found this quite tricky because I have 3 objects. I spoke to my tutor and told her that I was kind of struggling with isolating an object from the other two. This is because I am not allowed to adjust the scale of the objects, which would definitely isolate one of them. The aim is to isolate an object through contrast of colour or texture i.e. using complementary colours, or warm and cool colours. My tutor also said that there was no compulsion to use all three objects, and I could use just one for these exercises. So that’s exactly what I did. I used a complementary colour scheme and I also positioned my object off the page so that the eye would be forced onto the object due to the expanse of space on the paper. This is just a rough painting but it was useful in order to see how effective this technique is.
I also found it difficult to show emphasis through placement because I only had three items. For instance, all lines should converge to a single point, which is rather difficult with so few objects.
I think for this to work I will need to introduce other elements such as the table the objects sit on, and bring in some of the background, but at least I now have some idea of what I should be doing.
What if you bunched all three objects up at the point of interest. Another option would be overlap your three objects, zoom in on one interesting overlapping point and accentuate with darks and lights and a different color a point that you want the eye to go.
Great suggestions Leslie! I really like the idea of zooming in on one point and accentuating it. I have done the 3 bunched up together, but there hasn’t been a single focus – more an overlapping of items. I think I would need to have two items pointing to the third, but I think that may be too symmetrical.
Maybe you could get them from a different viewpoint like from above? Then you could do all three at an intersecting point? I've done this before by setting something up on the floor next to me. Then zoom in on that point.
Oooh that's a great idea! I shall give it a whirl
This is exciting! You’ve divided your paper into two interesting shapes. The contrasting color certainly adds visual interest. What I really like is that you’re tackling these hard composition questions! Very cool!
Thank you Peggy! What I find interesting about this is the sparseness of it. My hubby said it is so unusual to see a piece of mine with so much space in it. It’s not normally a composition I would try, especially because the paper is quite large. I tend to fill large sheets with lots of information. It was a cool experiment to try, and it is something I will be doing again.