Monday Night Homework 10/21/14 : The Important Thing

Margaret Wise Brown, author of Goodnight Moon, also wrote a wonderful book called The Important Thing, in which she talks about familiar things, listing their features. Snow, for example, is cold, and it falls from the sky, and tickles your nose when you tilt your head back to watch it, but the important thing about snow is that it is white.
We are doing something similar when we paint. The many features of our subject present themselves, all jostling one another for the spotlight. To know better what needs to be in the picture and what is optional, it helps to decide what the important thing is to you.
Find an image that appeals to you and take time to identify what you want to focus on in the scene. This is not necessarily a "focal point", or a center of interest. It may be a feeling, rather than a particular spot on the page. Keep it in mind when you make decisions about palette, cropping, how the page is oriented, which shapes need to be separated and which combined...everything, in other words.
When we put them up on the wall next week, we can try guessing what the important thing was to you.
Have fun

One painter might see the opportunity to have some fun with patterns in this photo, while another might be more interested in the way the color of the shadows changes as they pass over different surfaces.

Would you want to let the darks in this scene merge into one shape, or would you prefer to point out the differences between them? It depends on what your main purpose is.