Your Design Secret Sauce: Focal Points with Ingrid Christensen
Color gets all the credit, but value does all the work. BUT. Before Ingrid Christensen (Ep.87) gets to any of that, she first has to know this.
Her focal point.
Focal points might seem like a throw away choice. But the representative artists you love (like Christnens) never start a painting without knowing what their focal point (or area) will be.
Here’s why: The focal point unlocks decisions about value, design, and color. And without knowing what yours is, you risk getting to the end of the painting and feeling like nothing worked.
Focal points are NOT something you figure out in the painting. They are a choice you decide before you begin painting and then that choice leads your way through.
Put it to Practice:
Good focal points do three main things in a painting:
First, they get your viewer’s eyes into the painting itself. It’s what draws your viewer in.
Second, it’s the place in the painting that keeps pulling your viewers’ eye BACK. This keeps your viewer looking and enjoying your painting longer.
Third, they help you the artist choose between your options. Should this be saturated? Dark? Light? If you know your focal point, you’ll have a guide to the answer.
To create a focal point, first, decide what your focal area is. This may take sketching or auditioning different crops. What’s this reference about? What caught your eye first?
Once you’ve chosen, you’re ready to move to the second step. Use design to reinforce that choice.
Make sure you’ve cropped your photo so that the focal point is at one of your painting’s thirds. Then make sure you place your lightest light next to your darkest dark at that focal area.
When you build up the painting, you can also reinforce that focal point by keeping high contrasts at it and low contrasts everywhere else.
By figuring this out (both the choice and the design) before you start with paint, you’ll make your process much more enjoyable and you’ll feel confident that you’re piece has a solid piece of design set.
Want to work to build your skills using focal points? Join us in the Podcast Art Club for the Mini Sprint Focal Point Challenge running October 1-7. Join here.