Eye Movement

A well executed painting keeps your eye traveling through the painting without going off the side and out of the painting. To achieve this flow, composition, artistic license and knowing what details to include or edit all come into play.

 Blue Boat, was a fun painting from my recent New Zealand trip. Notice the two boats (red and green) in the center of painting. They were in that position so I originally painted them that way. However, over time, I realized that the horizontal positions cause your eye to move across the painting rather than toward the focal point, the larger blue boat.

In the final painting, I took artistic license to alter the position of the two middle ground boats so they point toward the focal area. If you look at each painting separately, you can sense how your eye naturally flows out of the painting in the first version and toward the blue boat in the finished painting.