IMAGE ESSAY #1

MOVEMENT Visual movement is used by artists to direct the scanning behavior of the eye along a path within an artwork. This path leads the viewer to areas of visual interest, focus, or emphasis. An artist arranges parts of an image to create a sense of motion by using lines, shapes, forms, and textures, or by combining elements of art to produce the look of action. For example, if you glance at a mug or cup, the first thing you look at is the handle. Why? Because the only major movement on the cup is the handle, and your eyes are trained to follow the curves along the handle. Through shape, by scaling the size of shapes, an artist creates movement.


Not only does line put an impact on movement in a piece of art work but so does color, value, texture, volume, and shape. It’s hard to imagine anything visual without the use of one or more of these elements. Let’s take a famous piece of art work for example. In Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh, the artwork is full of principles of design. Van Gogh uses strokes(lines) to form movement in the sky, buildings, and everything in the painting. Can you image this painting, if it were painted without strokes? It defintly wouldn’t be as appealing as it is now. Now, lets look at the color and value. Van Gogh used bright yellows, whites, blues, and many other colors to define the strokes which then define the buildings from the sky. If the painting were painted in one color, for example, black , you wouldn’t be able to depict any movement or anything else in the painting. Movement brings the line, color, value, texture, volume, and shape alive.

BLOG ASSIGNMENT #1

As I sit and ponder on what I should write for my first blog, only one thing comes my mind: art. I think the most asked questions that people ask when I tell them that I want to be an art teacher is, “ What made you choose art, and what do you hope to achieve once you get a degree?” Well, I finally have answers to your questions.

The day I wanted to teach art, was the best day of my life. I was at the Toledo Art Museum and I was walking around this quiet, boring museum. I despised art museums as a kid, because you had to go into this small room and you could not touch anything. I walked up to this painting that looked like the artist had just threw paint on it and called it art.

I pondered at it for a moment and said to my sister, “ Who calls this art? It is just a bunch of brush marks everywhere. It does not look like anything! I could do this!”

My older sister quickly replied to me, “ Every piece of artwork in this building was painted, sculpted, or designed for weeks, maybe even months. Every brush stroke on this painting was put there for a reason.”

When I first heard my sister, who is now a graphic designer, I did not believe her. It was not till I went home and I got out my cheap watercolor paints, that I figured out that I could not do that same piece of artwork. That is when it hit me; I wanted to spread that same message to kids.

With a bachelors degree in Art Education I hope to learn many new things to add to my knowledge of art, and discover techniques to help me teach students of many ages to the best of my ability. Once I have achieved a degree, I hope to attain a teaching job where I can expand children's awareness of the variety of artistic expressions, to acquaint them with many different kinds of media used, to teach them the techniques of the visual arts, and to help students gain taste and critical evaluation in art. I hope to open children's eyes and show them that it is not some big picture on a wall; it is art.