Artist at Work: Creating a Visual Hierarchy

The human eye perceives objects in a scene in order of contrast. Tone, color, and glazing are used to establish this "visual hierarchy" in your art. Join award-winning illustrator and Rhode Island School of Design professor Mary Jane Begin back in her studio as she discusses tricks to achieve visual hierarchy. She starts by establishing value, or light and dark areas in the composition, and then shows how to use varying opacity and a limited color palette to further define the forms in a painting. Finally, learn how glazing can make your colors pop even more and shift the palette toward a warm or cool tone. Mary Jane compares traditional media to a digital workflow while using brushes, sponges, watercolors, and acrylic paint to achieve her results. These lessons can be easily migrated to digital artwork and designs using programs like Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.

Mary Jane uses the following materials in this course:

Arches 140 lb hot press paper
Tube watercolors- Winsor & Newton Cotman brand
Paper stumps for blending
Pastels- a variety of stick and pencil forms (including Conte pastel pencils)
Short, fat, fine-bristle Winsor & Newton #2 and #4 brushes (for scrubbing color off)
Sceptre Gold II sable/synthetic blend #3, #6, and #10 brushes
Winsor & Newton Cotman brand 25 mm/1 in. flat brush (for washes)