Five Ideas Emphasizing and Understating Elements in your Creative Work

How does what you emphasize and what you understate in your work strengthen and enliven what you want to say?

There is always a reason that some creative works speak to you more than others. That is your internal voice speaking to you. Discovering what the artist is emphasizing in the work is a key to understanding that voice. The artist is also understating some of the elements in their work in order to let another shine. Both of these ideas are important to a successful work. It is a dance between the two.

Emphasize: Stress or indicate the importance of something.

What matters to you in your work? What element will communicate the meaning that you want to convey?

Understate: Express with less completeness than needed.

What might you leave out that is not necessary to the meaning you are trying to communicate. Can you distill your work down to the bare essentials?

I use patterns to create layers of interest and implied textures in my work. The patterns are created through repetition of lines and shapes. The textured collage adds visual interest and an appeal to the surface that I could not have created with paint and a paintbrush. I use transparent layers of collage to create depth and the urge for the viewer to reach out and touch the surface. Luckily my finished surfaces are sealed in tight and very durable, so touch all you want!

The use of line is understated in my work. I have a number of lines that are hiding underneath the layers that move the eye around the work and create almost a map for my composition. In the end they are almost entirely obliterated, but they served an important purpose for me along the way.

Every creative work has elements that are manipulated to compose a finished piece. In the visual arts, we use line, shape, form, color, texture, value, and space. In music, composers use melody, harmony, pitch, tempo, form, timbre, tonality, and dynamics. In poetry, writers use rhyme, figurative language, theme, tone and mood, sound devices, and meter, just to name a few. Explore your creative genre and explore the elements that you use most and then try some of the following ideas.

Choose one of your finished works and recreate it using a different emphasis. An example in my work would be to emphasize the line and understate the textures. Does this change what you were trying to express in your work?
Remove an element from your creative work. Really distill it down to the bare essentials. I might remove the saturation of my colors and see if that creates more emphasis on the layers of textured collage. Does this strengthen the work?
Use an element that you have never used before and add it to your work as a challenge. I tend to work with organic shapes because I love nature. I might challenge myself to use only geometric shapes to create my subject or use only geometric textures in my collage. Does this add an interest that you never thought about before?
Choose an element that has always been a struggle for you and push it to the extreme. For me, I am constantly photographing my work in black and white to check my values. I have found that I use more contrast in color temperatures than value. I might challenge myself to work more tonally to really push myself to use value more effectively. What element is a challenge for you?
Choose something you hate and emphasize that element in a series of work. For me I used to rarely use pink or purple. By creating an entire series with theses colors, I have become more familiar with how to mix the colors I enjoy and now I love it!