Where does your eye go? Emphasis and Contrast

When you look at a piece of art, you might look at a PART of it first before looking at the rest of it.

I bet you didn't know that the artist planned you to look at that part first!! They tried to create EMPHASIS.

What is the emphasis here?



We can create emphasis in our own artwork...it makes it look better!
Here's an easy step-by-step way to create emphasis:
1. Choose what you want people to look at first.
2. Create that thing you want people to look at first.
3. Surround it with the opposite! Create CONTRAST. Contrast is just a fancy word that means different.

Here's some examples of ways to create emphasis:
Color Contrast (a different color)


Size Contrast (a different size)


Put everything in one corner/area


Surround light things with dark OR dark things with light



Lines around the emphasis



Do you always have to have EMPHASIS?
Nope. Jackson Pollock was a successful artist who didn't use emphasis.