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Use of the various principles of design In this research I would like to choose the painting of the world famous and one of the most expensive artists Picasso, Woman with Stiletto. This painting is actually also called The Death of Marat. Marat was one of the historical figures during those times. So now let us try to apply the major principles of design in evaluating this masterpiece. Principles of design actually involve the manner in which artists and designers put together virtually everything they create. According to my mind this is not so easy to judge this painting in terms of design, because Picasso probably used his personal approach to these principles.
Let us begin with the balance notion of the painting. When determining balance we should consider the visual weight of objects that appear to be in the body. The size of the object also helps to identify its weight. In our case the objects appear to be in somewhat asymmetrical position to each other and thus here we see the presentation of asymmetrical balance. The color scheme is enriched with yellow and similar to it kinds of colors. The background is represented in a darker; I would say black kind of color scheme.
Color is one of the major elements of design, subject to principles of design such as dominance, unity, and contrast. In order to figure out the focal point of the painting or as it is called in another manner: emphasis we must consider, what draws our attention first, after looking at the painting. After that we need to figure out the second thing that we focus our attention on, and the trace between the two things is our emphasis. In our case the emphasis is the area between the woman and her victim. In this case we must understand that artists use emphasis, or a focal point, to bring us into a composition, and that point of emphasis intentionally affects our understanding of the work.
There are some other artists deliberately produce work without emphasis or a focal point. The proportion of this painting is pretty equally spread through the picture; the major objects on the masterpiece dominate the scale. The rhythm of the picture is expressed by the constant usage of various color schemes; repetition does not occur too often, because theyre not too many objects on the painting. You can figure out pleasing color schemes by applying the principles of design. For example, the principle of dominance suggests that one color should be dominant in a painting. This is the situation that we have in our case.
So you could pick one color like blue and use it for everything, varying only the value and intensity, as Picasso did in his blue period. This is a monochromatic color scheme. It has maximum dominance and minimum contrast. The principle of unity suggests that very similar colors will be pleasing together. Variations in the value and intensity of these colors give you plenty of room for expressing a wide range of color effects. This is an analogous color scheme, high in dominance and unity, low in color contrast.
The principle of contrast suggests that combining very different colors will add interest. If you make sure to have mostly one color and use the other color for emphasis, you can have the best of both worlds: color dominance and unity combined with exciting color contrast, which is the situation that we have in the case of Woman With Stiletto. Bibliography: The World of Art, Ch. 9.
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Research essay sample on Color Scheme Focal Point
