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.