"Welcome Mat" (sold)

(sold)

"Early morning prayers and a cup of coffee are like a welcome mat in front of a new day." The most blessed part of my day and life is when I am praying. A cup of coffee wakes me up physically, but prayer wakes me up spiritually. It's a good thought as you begin your day.

In early postings, I've gone on and on about the elements and principles of design. These stubborn principles wrap themselves around visual communication like a blanket. Whether you are conscious of them or not, they're always operative.

One of the more subtle principles of design is "gradation". It is what I call the "crescendo" and "decrescendo" of design. These are music terms which mean to gradually get louder or gradually get softer. In the visual world, the application operates with any of the elements of design. For instance, color can be very intense and then gradually fade into another color or into gray or white. You can see it very clearly in this piece as the green fades out into the cream color. The same "fading out" can happen with gray values, line work, size, and texture. As always, too much gradation (which includes very diffused edges) needs the contrast of hard lines. You can see that here with the image, the lettering, and the thicker applications of gesso, as well as the pencil lines in the first layer.

All of this is analyzation to the "hilt, but it really isn't a bad thing to analyze what is going on in a piece of art. If you cannot identify what you've done "accidentally" you cannot readily repeat the process. Putting a name to what you're doing will definitely help to add new techniques to your repertoire. Just something to think about.