Tag Archives: art

How to Add Focal Points to a Wall Mural or Painting

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There are more than a couple of methods for locating and placing a focal point on your canvas. The focal point is the area of emphasis in a painting that pulls a viewer’s eye into the painting. The focal point is also known as the center of interest in a painting.

One method of creating a focal point in a painting is to make one object or subject in the painting much larger than everything else in the painting.

Placing the image dead center and highlighting it with extremely lighter or darker colors is another way to do this. In fact simply using a light source in the painting to “shed light” on the main subject really does work to steer focus to where you want to look. The place where the eye is drawn to in a work of art is also known as the focal area in painting.

One way is to make most of a painting light and then have one pinpointed dark spot. For instance if you were painting a white cat and it had a dark brown eye then your eyes would immediately gravitate to the cat’s eye and that would become the focal point of the painting.

Another way to create a focal point is to contrast one shape with another. A good example would be the placement of a circle within a square. This is also a way of isolating the object in the painting that you really want to emphasize.

Yet another popular technique is to use a series of converging lines from the frame of the painting inwards to create a kind of bull’s eye that graphically draws the eye into concentrating on the main subject of the painting.

Interestingly enough many artists and art experts today don’t think that creating a focal point is necessary in an artistic work. Abstract art does not necessarily have a focal point. Many abstract painters use painterly repetition and alternation techniques to create works without a center of attention. In fact many would say the difference between realistic painting and abstract painting is the lack of a focal point.

However some abstract painters like Mondrian and Picasso did use abstract geometric shapes to draw the viewer’s eye into the painting. So it would be wrong to say that all abstract painting defies the idea of the central focal point.

How to Add Perspective to a Wall Mural or Painting

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Part of being a great artist is to understand painting perspective. This will aid you in creating believable 3-D objects. Here are some tips for helping you understand the composition of realistic looking objects.

One rule is to prevent objects in a painting from “kissing” each other. Do not have two objects just touching each other as that will look awkward. Every object or subject in a painting should be standing definitely apart in the scene or deftly overlapped. If the objects are “kissing” the perspective in the painting will be thrown out of whack.

One way to keep a painting in perspective is to paint the background first. Then paint in any objects in the foreground. Another tip is to paint in the brightest color you have on your palette first and then create shadows and sculpting effects with darker colors later.

When painting in a realistic way light sources or light directions are also completely crucial to having it look believable. Some painters make a viewfinder which helps them find the right proportions to compose a painting.

Focus is also a component of making believable three dimensional objects in paintings. Cropping out the elements that you don’t want in your composition can trick the eye into making it more believable.

However perspective is absolutely crucial as it refers to our point of view and where lines converge. Lines that are all parallel to each other in a painterly scene are called the vanishing point. They will always converge or vanish in a drawing. The exception to this rule of realism is lines that lie parallel to the picture plane in 3D perspective.

Foreshortening of objects in the foreground is also a rule of perspective. Things that are further away are drawn smaller as they recede into the distance.

There are other rules as well. Objects which are lower than the viewer’s eyes will appear below the level of the horizon, and the viewer will be able to see at least a little bit of their tops. Objects which are entirely above eye level will appear above the horizon, and the viewer will be able to see at least a little bit of their undersides.

In perspective painting most shapes don’t look real unless they are slightly distorted unless they are parallel with the picture plane. Circles will appear as ellipses.

There are also one point, two point and three point perspectives in each drawing. It is best to take a drawing class or get a great book on the subject to understand these concepts fully.