Mermaids Love Art: Emphasis Photography

Good morning everyone! Today our focus will be on the design principle of EMPHASIS. First let me remind you of what the design principles are....they go along with those art elements we always talk about, and when I describe them in class I usually say, "the elements and principles of art and design are like the ingredients we use to create our art. The art might look all different sorts of ways, depending on how we use those ingredients." Here they are:

As you can see, emphasis refers to the "most important part of the artwork", or the "part that stands out the most", or the "thing our eyes notice first, in a work of art". But HOW does an artist create emphasis in artwork? Check out this video to help explain it. This one is also kind of a silly one.

If you have any trouble viewing those, or if you just don't have the time, I will skip to the juicy stuff: An artist creates EMPHASIS by using the elements of COLOR (make one thing a different color), SIZE (or scale, one thing could be much BIGGER or smaller), and PLACEMENT. There are other ways, but those would be the basics.

Now that we have gotten through the artsy info and vocab, lets talk about how you will create your work of art today.

STEP ONE....Choose an object......

I went with a tulip

STEP 2....... Draw the object over and over on your paper. You could scatter them, draw them in a row, or draw them as if they are in a certain place. No need to color, unless you want to. I left mine in thin black marker, to really EMPHASIZE the last step, which is to place the real item on top of your drawing and take a picture.

Which one shows the emphasis? And why? Is it the color? Texture? Placement? Here you can clearly see that your eyes go right to that real tulip, because it stands out from the rest. That is what emphasis is all about.

Here is a second example I did of an apple....