One of my favorite hobbies is drawing. My favorite medium is charcoal, recently I have started to try Oil painting. Whatever the medium that you are using or what is the type of your artwork, you should learn the design principles. Learning that will make your artwork more elegant. Not only your artwork, it will affect on how you see the world around you.
“Keep It Balanced” one of the most important design principle. That will make you design unified; has single impression. A balanced artwork feels pleasing to the eye, and not lopsided in any way.
Balance Definition
Balance in design works the same way as a seesaw. On a seesaw, balance can be achieved by opposing two same-size objects at an equal distance from the fulcrum, or two different-size objects at varying distances from the fulcrum.
The major difference between seesaw and the design balance is that the elements in the design has visual weight not physical weight. Visual weight is an important design principle because the eye tend to look at heavy objects first, then proceed to lighter objects to gather more information.
Visual Weight
Visual weight describes how much something in an image pulls your eye to look at it. Imagine that you have an almost entirely white image with a small black dot in it. That black dot will pull your eye immediately; it carries a lot of visual weight.
The factors that affect on the visual weight of a visual element:
Larger feels heavier. In the following photography, the rock has so large size; to balance its visual weight, a yellow flower used for that.
The brighter and more intense its color, the heavier the element will feel. The less saturated a color (like sky blue), the less visual weight it has; some colors has high weight like red color.
In the following design red seems to be heaviest while gray seems to be lightest. Try to imagine the colors reversed with a gray small stone and a red large stones. The red would be overwhelming, and the image would be out of balance.
A darker object will have more weight than a lighter object.
High contrast gives more visual weight. If you want to draw attention to a light colored subject, place it against a dark background. Conversely, place a dark subject against a light background to make it stand out.
In the following design you will see the how is the white color gives high contrast with the blue color and to make this design balanced, a dark table added.
The further out an element is from the center, the heavier it will feel; a large object placed near the center can be balanced by a smaller object placed near the edge according to “Place your subject off the center” principle; Objects that are close to the edge of the frame carry more visual weight.
An element with more complex texture is heavier visually than one with a simple texture or no texture at all.
Now look at this artwork and tell me if it’s balanced or not and why?
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