Series 13:  Creative Focal Points

S13 L4 Lead with Intensity- Download

[typography font=”Cantarell” size=”24″ size_format=”px”]In this lesson, S13L4  Lead with Intensity of  the CREATIVE FOCAL POINTS series,  using as her subject four cows in a pasture, Dianne illustrates how to use the gradation of intensity from image to image to create a focal point. Basing this exercise on Raphael’s use of intensity in School of Athens, she takes you step by step in a study that gradually shifts the focal point to a single cow.[/typography].

[typography font=”Cantarell” size=”24″ size_format=”px”]  There are several ways to create focal points. Isolation, converging lines, contrasts, directional viewing, an image different from surrounding ones and placement are among the most common. But focal points are methods, not a must and when one exists in a subject, it might not be where we’d like it to be. This series explores four creative ways to change a focal point from its obvious location to another place as well as how to create a focal point where none exists.

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[typography font=”Cantarell” size=”24″ size_format=”px”] Among Dianne’s passions about painting and teaching painting is how composing principles can expand creative freedom if the artist transcends the “rule” idea and instead, transforms the principle into a tool that opens creative doors.  Focal points (points of emphasis) have been used for centuries in painting, but the masters used adroit methods for creating them, not some standard formula.  Dianne’s intention is to reinforce this idea.

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[typography font=”Cantarell” size=”24″ size_format=”px”]Take at look at Raphael’s School of Athens and notice how he uses high intensity colors in the two central figures, then gradates that intensity more towards neutral within the same colors elsewhere in the painting.  See how Dianne makes a use of the principle in her painting,  Just Before Sundown .[/typography]