Movement

​Movement is the way our eye moves around the work of art.  Movement is used to express emotion and direct attention and it can be manipulated to elicit specific responses in the viewer.  The most common element for creating movement is line, both direct and implied, although it is can also be done using shape, colour, and space.

To help you analyse movement, close your eyes, then when you open them, identify the first place your eye lands and continue naming the different points it travels.  Develop some adjectives to describe the movement.  Ask yourself where the artist wants you to look, and how does the artist get you there.

In Joseph Halfpenny’s painting our eyes move up and down the waterfall.  At times, it drifts off the left or right, but those trees on either side direct the eyes back to the waterfall.  It also helps that the two figures at the bottom center are also looking at the waterfall.
https://high.org/collections/the-upper-fall-rydal-westmorelandshire/

​In this painting by William Stanley Haseltine our eyes follow the coastline diagonally across the picture plane.  This is further assisted by the contrast between the light blue of the sea and the oranges, reds, and browns of the mountains.

​This is fun.  In this painting by Samuel F.B. Morse our eyes move around in a circle from the mother, to the baby, to the little girl and then back to the mother.  This is an excellent example of implied line, we are sympathetically following the gaze of the mother and baby, and then return because of the instrument (a bubble blower?) in the hands of the little girl.

​A similar thing happens in this Edward Westin photograph.
https://high.org/collections/shells/

​As mentioned above, movement can have an affect on the emotional impact of the image.  In this Greg Mike drawing, the movement is quite dramatic and frantic and our response to this image is similar.
https://high.org/collections/aloha/

​A similar effect, although more restrained, can be seen in this Juan Eduardo Gomez painting.
https://high.org/collections/piaktipik/

​This George Cope painting has is even more restrained.
https://high.org/collections/a-pair-of-spectacles/

​Try it on your own with this Joseph Decker painting.  Where does your eye travel to?  How does it get there?  What adjectives would you use to describe the movement?  Remember to refer to specific elements in the painting as your evidence.
https://high.org/collections/still-life-with-peanuts/