How to Decorate Your Art or Mural With Light Effects

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If you learn how to fill your art with light and color you will be engaging in one of the most delightful aspects of creativity. Furthermore it is a way of adding depth and realism to any work of art.

One of the main ways to accomplish this is to decide on where in your work of art you will find the light source. The light source in painting is absolutely crucial to having things look real.

You start with the basics by painting in the rudimentary light and dark hues. The key is to paint in the darker hues in the places of the painting that are the furthest away from the light source. For instance, if your light source is from the right then the painting hues will be lighter on the right and darker on the left. This is also the key to painting shadows and making them look realistic.

Painting figures is similar except that you treat each human or animal limb (like an arm or leg) separately and paint darker hues according to where it makes the most sense.

Dark blue paint can be quite effective as a base for painting shadows. If you are painting with acrylic use one brush filled with acrylic paint to two with water. If you are painting light and color in oils use the same recipe but use paint thinner instead. This is the easiest way to add shadows to a painting without the risk of having the painting turn out too dark.

The shadows should also be in alignment with your light source. Shadows almost always run in a straight line from the light source to the figure and to where they fall. You can use a ruler to make sure this is visually accurate in your painting.

If you are painting a landscape then you need to be mindful of where the sun is on the horizon in your painting and make adjustments accordingly. This will help add atmosphere, depth and light to your painting.

Finally be sure to keep your darker paints thin so that you can easily remedy a mistake if you have to and note where the hues and shadows are so that your painting looks very realistic in the end.

How to Add Focal Points to a Wall Mural or Painting

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There are more than a couple of methods for locating and placing a focal point on your canvas. The focal point is the area of emphasis in a painting that pulls a viewer’s eye into the painting. The focal point is also known as the center of interest in a painting.

One method of creating a focal point in a painting is to make one object or subject in the painting much larger than everything else in the painting.

Placing the image dead center and highlighting it with extremely lighter or darker colors is another way to do this. In fact simply using a light source in the painting to “shed light” on the main subject really does work to steer focus to where you want to look. The place where the eye is drawn to in a work of art is also known as the focal area in painting.

One way is to make most of a painting light and then have one pinpointed dark spot. For instance if you were painting a white cat and it had a dark brown eye then your eyes would immediately gravitate to the cat’s eye and that would become the focal point of the painting.

Another way to create a focal point is to contrast one shape with another. A good example would be the placement of a circle within a square. This is also a way of isolating the object in the painting that you really want to emphasize.

Yet another popular technique is to use a series of converging lines from the frame of the painting inwards to create a kind of bull’s eye that graphically draws the eye into concentrating on the main subject of the painting.

Interestingly enough many artists and art experts today don’t think that creating a focal point is necessary in an artistic work. Abstract art does not necessarily have a focal point. Many abstract painters use painterly repetition and alternation techniques to create works without a center of attention. In fact many would say the difference between realistic painting and abstract painting is the lack of a focal point.

However some abstract painters like Mondrian and Picasso did use abstract geometric shapes to draw the viewer’s eye into the painting. So it would be wrong to say that all abstract painting defies the idea of the central focal point.